(Brussels) NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has talks with Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson in Brussels on Monday about ways to lift the Turkish veto on her country’s membership, ahead of a meeting on Tuesday in Madrid with President Erdogan .
Posted at 9:41 a.m.
“It is still too early to say if we will have progress from here to the summit” of Madrid, he declared during a press conference.
Mme Andersson is received at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels where a high-level meeting has been organized with representatives from Turkey, Sweden and Finland.
“When different countries are involved in the process, none can promise on behalf of the others if and when an agreement will be reached,” warned Jens Stoltenberg.
“The only thing I can promise is that we are working as hard as possible and as intensely as we can, to find a solution as soon as possible,” he said.
“I will not make any promises or speculate on specific timelines,” he warned.
“The summit was never a deadline. But it takes place. All the leaders (of NATO) are present there, as well as the Swedish and Finnish leaders. So that gives us an opportunity that we should take to see if we can make progress,” he explained.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet his Finnish counterpart Sauli Niinistö and Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson in Madrid on Tuesday at the start of the Atlantic Alliance summit organized in the Spanish capital, in the presence of Jens Stoltenberg.
The Turkish presidency, however, warned against over-optimism.
Ankara blocks the membership of the two Nordic countries, accused of harboring militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an organization considered “terrorist”, and denounces the presence in these countries of supporters of the preacher Fethullah Gülen, suspected of orchestrating a coup attempt in Turkey in July 2016.
“The candidatures of Sweden and Finland will make it possible to strengthen NATO, but an ally, Turkey, has expressed specific security concerns and we must take them into account”, explained Jens Stoltenberg.