{"id":16334,"date":"2023-07-07T08:08:40","date_gmt":"2023-07-07T05:08:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/?p=16334"},"modified":"2023-07-07T08:18:23","modified_gmt":"2023-07-07T05:18:23","slug":"swedish-prime-minister-meets-us-president-biden-to-discuss-bid-to-join-nato","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/swedish-prime-minister-meets-us-president-biden-to-discuss-bid-to-join-nato\/","title":{"rendered":"Swedish Prime Minister meets US President Biden to discuss bid to join NATO"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Sweden\u2019s Prime Minster Ulf Kristersson arrived in Washington on July 5, 2023, to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden. The meeting focused on finding ways to persuade Turkey to approve Sweden\u2019s bid to join NATO ahead of the alliance\u2019s summit next week.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cSweden is going to make our alliance stronger and has the same value set that we have in NATO,\u201d <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/briefing-room\/speeches-remarks\/2023\/07\/05\/remarks-by-president-biden-and-prime-minister-ulf-kristersson-of-sweden-before-bilateral-meeting\/\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color:#ac0707\" class=\"has-inline-color\">Biden told<\/span><\/a> Kristersson ahead of their bilateral meeting at the White House. \u201cI&#8217;m really looking, anxiously looking, forward for your membership.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Biden underscored that Sweden\u2019s accession into the alliance would secure Europe on the northern and eastern front against Russia. \u201cSweden is a capable and committed partner.&nbsp;Together, we\u2019re preparing our relationship for even further, including advancing the bilateral partnership agreement we\u2019re talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The U.S. president reiterated Washington\u2019s support for Stockholm\u2019s bid to join <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/tag\/nato\/\"><span style=\"color:#ac0707\" class=\"has-inline-color\">NATO<\/span><\/a> by saying that \u201cthe United States fully, fully, fully supports Sweden\u2019s membership in NATO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/tag\/sweden\/\"><span style=\"color:#ac0707\" class=\"has-inline-color\">Sweden<\/span><\/a>\u2019s Kristersson thanked the U.S. President for his invitation and the remarks as well as his support for Sweden\u2019s accession into the NATO alliance. \u201cWe highly appreciate your strong support for Sweden&#8217;s NATO accession,\u201d he said. He further added that \u201cWe do seek common protection. But we also do think that we have things to contribute with, to the security provided for the whole of NATO.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The \u201cUnited States fully supports Sweden\u2019s membership in NATO,\u201d said US President Biden as he met with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson at the White House in a show of support for \ud83c\uddf8\ud83c\uddea to join the NATO alliance. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/sUxMd3y3GH\">pic.twitter.com\/sUxMd3y3GH<\/a><\/p>\u2014 IRIA (@IRIA_Research) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/IRIA_Research\/status\/1676830845913681921?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">July 6, 2023<\/a><\/blockquote> <script async=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the emerging security crisis in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/tag\/europe\/\"><span style=\"color:#ac0707\" class=\"has-inline-color\">Europe<\/span><\/a>, Sweden and Finland scrapped their decades-long policy of military nonalignment and applied to join the NATO alliance as permanent members. Both nations required unanimous approval from all the existing NATO member states. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/finland-becomes-31st-member-of-nato-in-major-blow-to-russia\/\"><span style=\"color:#ac0707\" class=\"has-inline-color\">Finland was fully accepted as a NATO member<\/span><\/a> earlier this year in April, however, Sweden\u2019s application has not been ratified by Turkey and Hungary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ankara has accused Stockholm of harboring terrorists and being lenient towards the Kurdish organizations and their leadership that have found refuge in Sweden after being declared terrorist groups by Turkey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Turkey has demanded reforms in Sweden\u2019s anti-terrorism to which Sweden agreed. However, Turkey has shown its reservations about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/turkiye-urges-sweden-to-fulfill-all-commitments-before-joining-nato\/\"><span style=\"color:#ac0707\" class=\"has-inline-color\">Sweden\u2019s progress in fulfilling the requirements<\/span><\/a> that had been agreed upon by both sides before Ankara agreed to Stockholm\u2019s accession into the NATO alliance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignleft size-large is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/Turkey-Sweden-flags.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/Turkey-Sweden-flags.jpg?resize=841%2C449&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12960\" width=\"841\" height=\"449\"\/><\/a><figcaption><em><sup>Turkiye and Sweden flags (Image Credit: stockholmcf\/abdullahgul.gen.tr)<\/sup><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>In January 2023, Turkey suspended the talks as part of the Permanent Joint Mechanism that was established by the Trilateral Memorandum signed in Madrid on the margins of the 2022 NATO Summit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br><strong>Turkey\u2019s opposition<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As the leaders of the NATO alliance are gearing up for the annual summit next week in Lithuania, the pressure has been building up in Ankara to approve Sweden\u2019s accession into the alliance. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signaled earlier this week that his country is not ready to ratify Sweden\u2019s NATO bid. He also criticized a recent Quran-burning incident in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/tag\/sweden\/\"><span style=\"color:#ac0707\" class=\"has-inline-color\">Sweden<\/span><\/a> and called out Stockholm&#8217;s alleged inaction against terrorist organizations and Islamophobia as one of Turkey&#8217;s \u201cred lines\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Erdogan has also expressed his concerns about the U.S. linking Ankara\u2019s ratification with Turkey\u2019s $20 billion purchase of 40 F-16 fighter jets and nearly 80 modernization kits for its air force&#8217;s existing warplanes. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/IRIA_Research\/status\/1663794150381330432\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><span style=\"color:#ac0707\" class=\"has-inline-color\">Biden spoke with Erdogan<\/span><\/a> in May 2023, where he talked about Sweden&#8217;s NATO membership and Turkey&#8217;s request for F-16 fighter jets. Although Biden did not directly link the two issues in his call with the Turkish counterpart, he signaled that the issue of the F-16 fighter jets is currently stuck at the U.S. Congress which has authority to block major weapons sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The U.S. Congress and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairperson Bob Menendez continue to oppose the sale for reasons beyond NATO enlargement.&nbsp;Menendez also believes that the provision of fighter jets to Ankara would further intensify the tensions between Turkey and Greece, two NATO members stated that have a territorial dispute in the Aegean Sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a last-minute push for Sweden\u2019s accession, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will meet with senior officials from Turkey, Sweden, and Finland ahead of the NATO summit next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sweden\u2019s Prime Minster Ulf Kristersson arrived in Washington on July 5, 2023, to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden. The meeting focused on finding ways to persuade Turkey to approve Sweden\u2019s bid to join NATO ahead of the alliance\u2019s summit next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[62,1,125],"tags":[342,24,357,348,59,213,82,540,7,22,63],"class_list":["post-16334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-news","category-united-states","tag-biden","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-f-16","tag-nato","tag-sweden","tag-turkey","tag-turkiye","tag-u-s","tag-ukraine","tag-weapons"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/US-President-Biden-Sweden-PM-Kristersson.jpg?fit=690%2C370&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jJWb-4fs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16334"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16347,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16334\/revisions\/16347"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}