Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström had a conversation with the Turkish Foreign Minister yesterday.
BRUSSELS The foreign ministers of Sweden and Turkey discussed Sweden’s NATO membership in connection with the NATO meeting.
Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström according to the Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fida predicts that Sweden will become a member of NATO.
– He said he hopes that Sweden will be a member of NATO within a week or two, Billström said on Tuesday evening in Brussels.
President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan promised in July at the NATO summit in Vilnius that the Turkish parliament would process Sweden’s application “as quickly as possible”.
At the end of October, the matter went to the parliament for consideration, but it has not yet progressed beyond the foreign affairs committee.
Billström did not want to define to the journalists what a couple of weeks means.
– I’m not defining any weeks, I’m just telling what he said.
Was he talking about ratification or membership?
– He said the member.
What did you say to that?
– That it sounds good.
So what?
– Well, that we will come and see what happens. It is important that, in addition to the discussion, the thing happens. From Sweden’s point of view, we consider this to be crucial for our security.
In NATO, it was expected that the Swedish flag would have been ceremoniously raised in the ring of NATO flags on Tuesday.
However, the ratifications of Hungary and Turkey are still missing. Billström said that the Hungarian foreign minister promised again that they will not be the last country to accept membership.
Billström said that at the meeting the NATO countries have regretted that Sweden still could not be admitted to NATO. The Swedish government sees this as a sign of support for its country.
Also the Secretary General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg told during the meeting that he had hoped that Sweden would have already become a full member of NATO.
Sweden has had to learn patience
Sweden has tightened its terrorism laws and approved arms sales to Turkey during the NATO process.
Turkey, on the other hand, has linked Sweden’s NATO membership to whether the United States sells it F16 fighters. Last week, however, Turkey said it was interested in a joint European Eurofighter fighter.
Frustrating?
– In this situation, you have to arm yourself with patience, and we have become quite good at that, Billström said.