foreign minister Pekka Haavisto (Green) told Turkey informed YLE last weekend that Finland has fulfilled the conditions it set for supporting the membership application, but further negotiations are needed with Sweden. President Sauli Niinistö stated In Sweden’s national radio company, Sveriges Radio, that if Turkey ratifies Finland but not Sweden as a member of the union, Finland will not withdraw its application.
“You have to understand our position. It’s very difficult,” he said quoted saying Helsingin sanomat newspaper.
Minister of Defense Mikko Savola (The Center) stated to the Associated Press that Finland will not wait for Sweden if its offer is ratified. “No no. Then we join, he pointed out on the sidelines of the security conference.
Jens StoltenbergNATO’s Secretary General has similarly left the door open to the possibility of separating the two membership applications and at the same time assured that the alliance will continue its work to welcome two new members at the same time.
“But if only Finland is ratified, then Finland will come,” he said For the Swedish public television company SVT on Sunday.
“The main question is not whether Finland and Sweden will ratify together,” he said quoted saying to reporters last week at the New York Times. “The main issue is that they are both ratified as full members as soon as possible.”
Helsingin Sanomat reminded on Monday that there is still uncertainty surrounding the process, as neither of the pending membership applications has been ratified by the two detainers, Hungary and Turkey.
The NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania in June has been considered a critical juncture in the process. President Niinistö proposed last week that if the applications have not been ratified by then, it is difficult to imagine why the process will continue after the summit.
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
Source: The Nordic Page
