The prime ministers of Finland and Sweden have urged Hungary and Turkey to approve their countries’ applications to join Nato, but Ankara insisted it would not lift its objections without further extraditions of suspects it considers terrorists.
The two Nordic nations applied to join the US-led defence alliance in May, jettisoning decades of military non-alignment in a historic policy shift triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Twenty-eight of Nato’s 30 members have ratified their requests. Hungary and Turkey are the only two not to have done so.
Budapest said last week it supported the applications and its parliament would ratify them by mid-December, but Ankara has again signalled it wants concrete action against groups it deems to be terrorist.
“All eyes are now on Hungary and Turkey,” Finland’s prime minister, Sanna Marin, said on Tuesday. “We are waiting for these countries to ratify our applications. I think it would be important that this would happen preferably sooner than later.”
Sweden’s new prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, said at the same meeting in Helsinki that Sweden had “full respect for the fact that every country within the alliance makes its own decisions”, adding that he was due to visit Ankara in the coming days.
Source thguardian
