BRUSSELS (Reuters) – NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday that Sweden’s membership in the alliance was within reach after a meeting in Brussels to overcome Turkish objections.
Stoltenberg said leaders of Sweden and Turkey would meet in Vilnius on Monday on the eve of the defence alliance’s summit in the city later in the week with the goal being to iron out lingering obstacles toward Sweden becoming a NATO member.
“My main ambition is now to get this agreed by the summit,” he said after meeting with Swedish, Turkish and Finnish officials at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
Sweden and Finland applied for NATO membership last year, abandoning policies of military non-alignment that had lasted through the decades of the Cold War as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threw Europe’s security architecture into flux.
Membership application to the alliance must be approved by all NATO members and while Finland’s was green-lighted in April, Turkey and Hungary have yet to clear Sweden’s bid. Stockholm has been working to join at next week’s NATO summit in Vilnius.
“We are hoping and looking for a positive decision next week,” Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom told reporters in Brussels.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan says Sweden harbours members of militant groups, mainly supporters of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), who he accuses of organising demonstrations and financing terrorist groups.
Sweden has said it has fulfilled the demands agreed upon in negotiations with Turkey, including introducing a new bill that makes being a member of a terrorist organization illegal.
(Reporting by Andrew Gray, Charlotte Van Campenhout in Brussels, Niklas Pollard and Johan Ahlander in Stockholm; Writing by Niklas Pollard; Editing by Benoit Van Overstraeten and Toby Chopra)
