Published January 26,2024
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Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson mentioned Friday he would “not negotiate” with Hungary over Sweden’s NATO bid regardless of Budapest now the only real holdout after Türkiye’s ratification.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban this week invited Kristersson to Budapest to debate the problem “at your earliest convenience”, an invite Kristersson on Thursday accepted.
“I’m happy to go to Budapest … We have a lot to talk about … but we’re not negotiating the NATO membership, there are no negotiations on this,” Kristersson advised Swedish tv TV4.
“But we could talk about how we will best cooperate in NATO,” he mentioned.
Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom on Tuesday mentioned there was “no reason to negotiate” with Hungary.
Kristersson mentioned Friday that whereas he was keen to journey to Budapest, a gathering with Orban on the European Union Council in Brussels on February 1 was extra sensible.
“We’ll see each other on Thursday next week at the European Council and we can begin discussing things then,” he mentioned.
For a go to to Budapest, “we’d have to find a date for this, things like this aren’t usually done in haste. I suspect that his calendar, like mine, is quite full.”
Orban’s invitation got here simply days after Hungary criticised Sweden for not taking steps to strengthen bilateral relations.
Budapest has usually denounced what it referred to as Sweden’s “openly hostile attitude”, accusing Swedish representatives of being “repeatedly keen to bash Hungary” on rule-of-law points.
Orban mentioned nonetheless on Wednesday that he had reaffirmed his “support” for Sweden’s membership to the safety alliance in a telephone name with NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg.
Sweden and Finland dropped many years of navy non-alignment and utilized for NATO membership in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine practically two years in the past.
Finland grew to become the thirty first nation of the alliance final April.
NATO membership purposes require unanimous ratifications by all alliance members.
After greater than a 12 months of delays, Türkiye‘s parliament ratified Sweden’s bid on Tuesday and President President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan signed the formal accession protocol on Thursday.
Source: www.anews.com.tr