Green light for Sweden in NATO against an EU opening to Turkey: Ankara imposed a strong condition on Monday, on the eve of a crucial summit of the Atlantic Alliance, dominated by military support for the Ukraine facing the Russian invasion. As for the question of Ukraine joining NATO, the Alliance announced that it was going to remove a major obstacle: the MAP (“Membership action plan”), a sort of antechamber to the candidacy for NATO. Alliance which sets a number of reform objectives.
The allies “are ready” to drop the membership action plan requirement for Ukraine’s candidacy, a Western official told AFP on condition of anonymity. This action plan “is only one of the stages of the process of joining NATO. Even if it is deleted, Ukraine will still have to carry out other reforms before joining NATO” , he said.
“First pave the way for Turkey’s EU membership”
However, a short-term buy-in has been swept aside by US President Joe Biden, who is leading a whirlwind visit to London to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and King Charles III to also discuss weaponry ahead of the two-day summit in Vilnius. In the meantime, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose agreement is mandatory for Sweden to join the Alliance, put strong pressure on Monday. “First pave the way for Turkey to join the European Union and then we will pave the way for Sweden just as we paved the way for Finland,” Erdogan said as talks between Ankara and the EU have been at a standstill for several years.
He also reiterated his demands towards Sweden, which he accuses of leniency towards the Kurdish militants who have taken refuge on its soil, before his meeting with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. Erdogan is calling for dozens of extraditions of activists she calls “terrorists”. Sweden and its neighbor Finland ended decades of military non-alignment and asked to join NATO following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Finland officially joined the Alliance in April. A year ago, at the previous NATO summit in Madrid, it took hours of negotiation to wrest support from Erdogan for the initial invitation to Stockholm.
Warranties
In order to dissuade Moscow from launching new offensives in the future, kyiv but also the countries of Eastern Europe are demanding a clear roadmap from the NATO summit in Lithuania which will end on Wednesday. But Washington and Berlin are reluctant to go much further than a promise made by NATO that Ukraine would join one day, without specifying a timetable. “I don’t think she’s ready to be part of NATO,” he swept up in an interview with the American channel CNN about Ukraine, also stressing that there was no unanimity among the allies on the prospects of bringing Kiev “in the middle of a war”. “We would be at war with Russia if that were the case,” he warned.
Membership would have “very negative consequences” for European security, also warned the Kremlin on Monday, which considers it a “threat” against Russia requiring a “clear and firm response”. While a new Russian bombardment on a humanitarian aid distribution center in Orikhiv (center) killed at least four people on Monday and the Ukrainian counter-offensive is struggling, the members of the Alliance nevertheless intend to give guarantees of their commitment to defend Ukraine. kyiv claimed on Monday to have taken back 14 km2 last week, or 193 km2 since the beginning of June. Several NATO heavyweights are negotiating possible long-term arms supply commitments to kyiv.
Cluster munitions criticized
The arms pledges would complement the tens of billions of dollars of equipment already delivered to Ukraine since Russia invaded Ukraine just over 500 days ago. In the meantime, Ukraine has already obtained a promise from Washington on Friday to deliver cluster munitions, a very controversial weapon. These weapons, banned in many countries, are strongly criticized because they kill indiscriminately by dispersing small explosive charges before or after the impact and are accused of causing many collateral civilian victims. Russia saw it as an “admission of weakness”.
US President Joe Biden, who has defended his “difficult” decision, made a whirlwind visit to British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who called on him on Saturday to “discourage” the use of these weapons banned by the Oslo convention of 2008 signed by his country. Joe Biden touted a “rock-solid” relationship between the two countries after the interview. The war in Ukraine, which started on February 24, 2022 with a Russian invasion, has killed 9,000 civilians, including 500 children, according to the UN, which estimates that the death toll could be much higher.
No link between Turkey’s EU candidacy and Sweden’s NATO membership, according to Scholz
Olaf Scholz said on Monday that there was no link between Turkey’s EU membership negotiations and Sweden’s entry into NATO, as Turkish President Recep Tayyip claimed. Erdoğan. “It should not be considered as a related subject”, declared the German Chancellor during a press conference in Berlin, considering that “nothing stands in the way of Sweden joining NATO”, to which the Turkish president has been blocking for months.
Olaf Scholz said he saw a “positive message” in the statements of the Turkish president, namely that a green light for Sweden’s membership is “conceivable in the near future”. Negotiations between Turkey and the EU have been stalled for several years. Turkey is the last NATO country, with Hungary, to oppose the entry of Sweden, despite the measures taken by the Scandinavian country, including a reform of its Constitution and the adoption of a new anti-terrorism law as Erdogan criticizes Sweden for its alleged leniency towards Kurdish militants who have taken refuge on its soil.