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Tag: Tobias Billström

  • Sweden says Turkey pledges to ratify its NATO bid ‘within weeks’

    Sweden says Turkey pledges to ratify its NATO bid ‘within weeks’

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    BRUSSELS — Turkey has promised Sweden it will ratify its bid to join NATO “within weeks,” Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström said Wednesday.

    Referring to his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan, with whom he spoke on Tuesday, Billström said: “He told me that he expected the ratification to take place within weeks. And of course, we don’t take anything for granted from the side of Sweden, but we look forward to this being completed.”

    The Turkish parliament’s foreign affairs commission recently abruptly postponed a session to vote on Sweden’s accession bid.

    According to Billström, the top Turkish envoy didn’t put forward any new conditions in the conversation. “There were no new demands from the Turkish government, so we look [at] our part as being fulfilled,” he told reporters at the NATO foreign ministerial meeting.

    Apart from Turkey, Hungary has also not ratified Sweden’s membership status in the alliance.

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    Stuart Lau

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  • With Erdoğan back, Sweden presses Turkey again on NATO bid 

    With Erdoğan back, Sweden presses Turkey again on NATO bid 

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    LULEÅ, Sweden — Sweden has met all of its commitments to join NATO and expects to become part of the transatlantic military alliance by July, Tobias Billström, the country’s foreign minister, told POLITICO.

    Speaking on the sidelines of the EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council summit, Billström said Stockholm had assuaged all of the concerns from Turkey, an existing NATO member which has held up Sweden’s application over concerns about its support for Kurdish groups which Ankara considers to be terrorist entities. Longtime leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan secured a new term as Turkish president on Sunday.

    Sweden’s tweaks included updating its domestic terrorism legislation, which will come into effect on June 1, to include lengthy prison terms for individuals convicted of participating in extremist organizations in ways that promote such groups. That is a veiled reference to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has a following in Sweden but is banned in Turkey.

    Billström said he now expected Sweden to join the alliance ahead of a NATO meeting in Vilnius on July 11.

    “We have delivered everything that we said that we were going to do,” Billström said. “There is a high expectation that we will be a member before Vilnius.”

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    Mark Scott

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