US Secretary of State Blinken urges Scandinavian states to join NATO
During his visit to Türkiye on Monday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with his counterpart Cavusoglu about the membership of Sweden and Finland to NATO. While Cavusoglu insisted that Stockholm take more steps, Blinken invited the Scandinavian states to join NATO "as quickly as possible".
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken paid a visit to Türkiye on Monday. Although his Turkish counterpart emphasized that more concrete steps should be taken, Blinken said that the US strongly supports the membership of Sweden and Finland to NATO.
NATO memberships of the Scandinavian countries were stopped because Türkiye said it harbored terrorist groups and therefore did not approve of their membership. Ankara has said recently that it will only approve Finland's membership.
“Finland and Sweden have already taken concrete steps to fulfil the commitments that they met under the trilateral memorandum of agreement that they signed,” Blinken said, adding that the United States strongly supported their accession into the alliance "as quickly as possible."
He reiterated that NATO's Nordic expansion issue is not a bilateral one with Türkiye.
But Cavusoglu, alongside Blinken, said all parties in the alliance must convince Sweden in particular to take more action to address Ankara’s concerns and win its support for the bid.
Cavusoglu also insists that Stockholm do more.
“Sweden made a law change, but we see that every kind of activity, including terrorism financing, recruitment and propaganda, is continuing in Sweden,” he said.
“If they take steps that convince our parliament and people, there could be a development in this direction,” he added.
(alarabiya)
