BRUSSELS — Finnish and Swedish leaders will
discuss their stalled
NATO bids with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on
Tuesday in a push to convince him at the start of a summit in Madrid.
اضافة اعلان
But Ankara said the four-way meeting, which will
also involve NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, did not mean it was close to lifting
objections to the two Nordic countries joining the military bloc.
Officials said Monday the leaders will meet in
Madrid, in a last-ditch bid to break to deadlock that threatens to overshadow
the NATO summit, which will focus on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Representatives from
Ankara, Helsinki and Stockholm
held a fresh round of talks on Monday at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels to try
to hammer out the differences.
“My strong hope is that this dialogue can be
successfully concluded in the near future, ideally before the summit,” said
Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson after meeting Stoltenberg in
Brussels.
Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine earlier this year saw
the two Nordic countries abandon decades of military non-alignment by applying
in May for NATO membership.
But the joint
membership bid, initially believed to be a speedy process, has been delayed by
objections from NATO member Turkey.
‘Safe haven’
Ankara has accused
Finland and
Sweden particularly of providing a safe haven for outlawed Kurdish
militants whose decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state has claimed
tens of thousands of lives.
The Turkish leader has also called on Sweden and
Finland to lift arms embargoes imposed against Turkey in 2019 over Ankara’s
military offensive in Syria.
Erdogan signaled over the weekend that no progress
had been made in Sweden’s bid to join NATO, urging Stockholm to take “concrete
actions” to meet Ankara’s concerns.
He said Monday that Turkey “will provide documents
and images demonstrating our interlocutors’ hypocrisy” towards groups Ankara
views as terrorists.
Andersson insisted at NATO that “Sweden is not and
will not be a safe haven for terrorists” and said Stockholm had sought to
address Turkish concerns over extradition requests lodged by Ankara.
“The relevant authorities work intensively in order
to expel persons who could be a security threat,” Andersson said.
“And there are a substantial number of cases which
are currently being processed.”
Turkish officials said Ankara does not view the
summit as a final deadline for resolving its objections.
Erdogan’s chief foreign policy adviser said
Tuesday’s four-way meeting did not mean that an agreement was imminent.
‘Serious changes’
“Participating in this
summit does not mean that we will step back from our position,” Ibrahim Kalin
told HaberTurk channel.
“We are conducting a negotiation. It has many
stages.”
Kalin said Finland and Sweden need to make “serious
changes” to their laws “and constitution” — targeting outlawed Kurdish
militants.
“We want you to show the same change against the
PKK and its affiliated YPG, PYD and similar structures,” he said, referring to
Kurdish groups operating in Syria and Iraq.
Stoltenberg insisted that Sweden had “taken concrete
steps in recent days to directly address Turkey’s concerns”.
“You have already amended Swedish law. You have
launched new police investigations against the PKK and you are currently
looking at Turkish extradition requests,” he told Andersson.
“These concrete steps represents a paradigm shift in
Sweden’s approach to terrorism.”
Read more Region and World
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
