Ankara holds the keys to the bloc’s expansion, but Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu will skip the Oslo gathering
Turkey’s Mevlut Cavusoglu will not attend a meeting with NATO foreign ministers in Oslo this week, Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström said on Wednesday. Cavusoglu’s absence means that no immediate progress will be made in Sweden’s bid for NATO membership, despite Stockholm’s insistence that it is now complete.
Billstrom told Reuters he had hoped to meet Cavusoglu in the Norwegian capital, but that the two would talk at a later date as part of an agreement they signed last year in Madrid.
This agreement, said Billström, “is much more important than two ministers sitting and drinking coffee.”
Sweden, Finland and Turkey agreed last year that the two Nordic nations would lift an arms embargo against Turkey, extradite alleged Kurdish and Gulenist terrorists and crack down on Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) activities within their borders, in exchange for Ankara lifting its veto on their accession to NATO.
Joining the US-led bloc requires the unanimous consent of all existing members. Trkiye signed up to Finland’s bid in March, after it adopted tough anti-terror legislation, while Billstrom said similar legislation coming into effect in Sweden this week should satisfy Ankara’s demands.
Billström has also said that “there are high expectations that we will become a member” before NATO leaders meet for their annual summit in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius in July. This week’s meeting in Oslo is the only NATO meeting scheduled before the summit in Vilnius, giving Billstrom and Cavusoglu six weeks to find out whether Sweden’s new law is enough for Ankara to lift its veto.
Apart from Trkiye, Hungary is the only NATO member that has not ratified Sweden’s membership application. Budapest has cited Stockholm’s support for legal action against its conservative LGBT and migration policies as the key factor behind the impasse.
Source: sn.dk