At a news conference in Washington with visiting Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto, Blinken said the U.S. has no reason to believe Turkey’s concerns cannot be addressed. His comments came after Turkey's top diplomat said Finland and Sweden would have to take “concrete steps” before Ankara could support their membership. “The United States fully supports Finland and Sweden joining the alliance and I continue to be confident that both will soon be NATO members,” Blinken said. We hope that some results could be achieved before the NATO summit.”Sweden and Finland submitted their written applications to join NATO last week. “There is no doubt that we do need the accession of Sweden and Finland to the NATO alliance in order to make it stronger," Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau said.

Source: thestar May 28, 2022 02:51 UTC