Sweden to send delegation to Turkiye for talks on NATO membership

The government of Sweden will send representatives to Turkiye to resolve existing disagreements regarding its NATO bid, kingdom's Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist.

"We will send a group of officials to hold discussions and the dialogue with Turkiye, and we will see how the issue will be resolved and what it actually is. But the signals we got from NATO are that there is an agreement on that both Sweden and Finland must be admitted to the alliance," he said.

On Monday, the Swedish parliament will hold debates on NATO accession, and the government will meet to approve the membership bid. 

"I cannot say when exactly the bid will be sent but the decision will be adopted today," the minister said.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that Ankara is not supportive of Finland and Sweden's NATO bid since "the Scandinavian countries are a guest house for terrorist organizations" - members of Kurdistan Workers' Party outlawed in Turkiye. On Saturday, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu also expressed outrage at this. He noted that the majority of Turkish residents opposed the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO and asked Ankara to block the process, but it intends to discuss this with its allies in the alliance, as well as Helsinki and Stockholm.

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