NATO’s chief on Tuesday voiced guarded optimism on welcoming Sweden to the alliance as the US pressed holdout Turkey to drop its objections, two days after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won re-election.
Sweden and Finland last year reversed decades of hesitation and formally applied to join NATO after Russia invaded Ukraine, which had unsuccessfully sought to enter the alliance whose members promise to defend one another.
However, decisions must be unanimous and Turkey has used its leverage to push the two countries over the presence of Kurdish militants, letting Finland join NATO in April, but still blocking Sweden.
Photo: AFP
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said it was “within reach” for Sweden to join in time for the July 11-12 NATO summit in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius.
“There are no guarantees, but it’s absolutely possible to reach a solution and enable the decision on full membership for Sweden by then,” Stoltenberg told reporters in Oslo on the eve of a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting to prepare for the summit.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, visiting Sweden on his way to Oslo, said the Swedish government had addressed Turkish concerns.
“The time is now to finalize Sweden’s accession,” Blinken told a news conference with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson in the northern Swedish city of Lulea.
“We urge both Turkey and Hungary — which also has not yet ratified — to ratify the accession as quickly as possible,” Blinken said. “There is no reason for any further time. Sweden is ready now.”
Blinken said the US wanted the process to be “completed in the weeks ahead,” but stopped short of saying if he was certain it would be finished by the summit.
Erdogan, Turkey’s leader for two decades, won another five-year term on Sunday after a campaign in which he vowed to stand up to the West.
He has accused Sweden, with its generous asylum policies, of being a haven for “terrorists,” especially members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that is outlawed by Ankara.
Despite the rising hopes of accession, Sweden once again drew Turkish ire on Tuesday as Turkey deplored an “unacceptable” protest by activists in Sweden aimed at Ankara.
The pro-Kurdish Rojava Committee of Sweden posted an anti-Erdogan video on social networks on Monday showing a PKK flag being projected onto the Swedish parliament, the latest of several similar provocations by the group.
Stoltenberg said he was in “constant contact” with Turkish authorities to try to lift the final obstacles to Sweden’s accession.
Blinken played down any connection between Sweden’s membership and a potential US sale of F-16 jets to Turkey, although US President Joe Biden appeared to draw a link in remarks to reporters after a congratulatory call to Erdogan.
“These are distinct issues. Both, though, are vital in our judgement to European security,” Blinken said.
The Biden administration earlier this year indicated its support for a US$20 billion F-16 package for Turkey including 40 new jets and upgrades on 79 existing planes.
However, the US Congress looks likely to block the sale, with US Senator Bob Menendez, the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, voicing alarm that Erdogan would use the advanced war planes to intimidate or even attack fellow NATO ally Greece.
Sweden and Finland, while close defense partners of the West, had officially remained non-aligned militarily out of fear of angering their giant neighbor Russia.
Kristersson told Blinken that Lulea, where US and European officials were to meet yesterday on trade and technology issues, was a six-and-a-half-hour drive from the border with Russia.
“Filling the territorial gap in the north will be one of Sweden’s many security contributions to NATO when we join the alliance,” Kristersson said.
Hungary, whose hard-right government has tense relations with much of the EU, has also refused to give its blessing to Sweden, although it is largely seen as following Turkey’s lead.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver