BRUSSELS, 26 Jun: NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday that he will call an urgent meeting in the coming days to try to overcome Turkish objections to Sweden joining the military organization. It\u2019s a last-ditch effort to have the Nordic country standing alongside the allies at a major summit next month.
\nNATO requires the unanimous approval of all members to expand. Turkey accuses Sweden of being too lenient toward groups that Ankara says pose a security threat, including militant Kurdish groups and people associated with a 2016 coup attempt.
\nStoltenberg said he has held fresh talks on Sweden\u2019s candidacy with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as well as senior officials from Sweden and neighboring Finland, which became the 31st member of the world\u2019s biggest security organization in April.
\n\u201cWe agreed to convene a high-level meeting in Brussels before the summit\u201d in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius beginning July 11, Stoltenberg told reporters. \u201cThe aim is to make progress in completing Sweden\u2019s accession to NATO.\u201d
\nHe provided no date for the meeting, but said that it would involve foreign ministers, intelligence chiefs and national security advisors.
\nFearing they might be targeted by Moscow after Russia invaded Ukraine last year, Sweden and Finland abandoned their traditional positions of military nonalignment to seek protection under NATO\u2019s security umbrella.
\nHungary is also delaying its approval of Sweden\u2019s candidacy but has never clearly stated publicly what its concerns are. NATO officials expect that it will follow suit once Turkey lifts its objections. (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BRUSSELS, 26 Jun: NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday that he will call an urgent meeting in the coming days to try to overcome Turkish objections to Sweden joining the military organization. It\u2019s a last-ditch effort to have the Nordic country standing alongside the allies at a major summit next month. NATO requires the unanimous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-219224","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219224\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}