Stoltenberg confident common ground can be found on Sweden, Finland membership

BERLIN: NATO’s chief said on Sunday he was confident common ground could be reached to allay Turkey’s concerns over Sweden and Finland’s membership into the alliance and that it would seek to boost its presence in the region, while their membership is ratified.

“I’m confident that we will be able to address the concerns that Turkey has expressed in a way that doesn’t delay the membership or the accession process,” Jens Stoltenberg told reporters by video link, adding that Ankara had made it clear it did not want to block the Nordic states’ membership bid.

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Stoltenberg added that he wanted to speed up the ratification process of the two countries as much as possible and that the alliance would look into ways to provide security assurances for the interim period, including by increasing NATO’s presence in the region.