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8 Jan. () –
The Swedish Prime Minister, Ulf Kristersson, declared this Sunday that the Turkish government is imposing a series of demands on his country to join NATO that Sweden cannot and does not want to comply with.
“They want things that we cannot and do not want to give them and now the decision falls on the Turks,” declared the prime minister during the People and Defense conference held in Stockholm and reported by the newspaper ‘Aftonbladet’.
The conference was also attended by the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Finland, Pekka Haavisto, another country that has also applied to join NATO to protect itself from the threat from Russia and which, by like Sweden, it is at the expense of Turkey lifting its veto.
Ankara refuses to admit these two countries to the Atlantic Alliance until they hand over all the individuals accused by Ankara of belonging to Kurdish organizations declared by the Turkish government as terrorist groups, such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). ). Likewise, Turkey also calls for the opening of the bilateral arms trade.
Before the conference, the Finnish foreign minister assured that Finland will wait for Turkey and Sweden to settle their differences. “We are not in such a hurry to join NATO that we do not wait for Sweden to receive the go-ahead,” Haavisto said in statements collected by the same medium.
