Hurriyet Daily News
November 27, 2022

Sweden makes progress in NATO bid talks: Chief negotiator

The Swedish chief negotiator leading the NATO bid talks between Türkiye and Finland has said his country has made progress in NATO talks and that only some small steps will be needed for attaining full membership.

“We exchanged a series of ideas with the police and their colleagues in Türkiye to speed up the fight against the terrorist threat to Türkiye from the PKK,” Oscar Stenström told local radio after Turkish, Swedish and Finnish delegations met in Stockholm on Nov. 25.

[An] agreement paved the way for the two Scandinavian countries to launch the membership process to the alliance on the condition that they intensify anti-terror cooperation with Türkiye and extradite terrorists.

A joint statement issued by the three countries after the meeting stated that Türkiye had accepted that “NATO candidates had taken steps that fulfilled their commitments.”

“We had a very good tone, and for the first time in a joint statement, we signaled that progress was being made,” Stenström said.

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Stenström said that Sweden has “one more small step towards the full membership” and that “the fulfilled requirements will also be applied to Sweden’s terrorism legislation.”

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Meanwhile, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson once again reiterated in a statement to the country’s press that “they would fulfill the commitments they made to Türkiye.”

Evaluating the memorandum signed at the NATO summit in Madrid, Kristersson said, “This is an agreement that Finland and Sweden promised Türkiye on security. We will fulfill the commitments we promised.”