NATO allies welcome agreement between Turkiye, Sweden: Vilnius summit communiqué

NATO allies, on Tuesday, welcomed an agreement between Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Swedish Prime Minister, Ulf Kristersson, that paved the way for the Nordic country’s entry into the military alliance, Reuters reports.

“We look forward to welcoming Sweden as a full member of the Alliance and, in this regard, welcome the agreement reached between the NATO Secretary-General (Jens Stoltenberg), the President of Turkiye and the Prime Minister of Sweden,” said a joint statement issued after day one of the ongoing NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Turkiye, on Monday, agreed to send Sweden’s NATO Accession Protocol to its Parliament for ratification.

READ: Does Sweden provoke Turkiye to avoid joining NATO?

The communiqué described the fight against terrorism as “essential” for NATO’s defence.

“We categorically reject and condemn terrorism in the strongest possible terms. Countering terrorism in all its forms and manifestations is essential to our collective defence,” it said.

Regarding Ukraine’s NATO membership, the communiqué underlined that the alliance “fully supports” Kyiv’s right to choose its own security arrangements, adding that “Ukraine’s future is in NATO”.

“We reaffirm the commitment we made at the 2008 Summit in Bucharest that Ukraine will become a member of NATO, and today we recognise that Ukraine’s path to full Euro-Atlantic integration has moved beyond the need for the Membership Action Plan,” it said. “Ukraine has become increasingly interoperable and politically integrated with the Alliance, and has made substantial progress on its reform path.”

However, it said that the Alliance will extend an invitation to Ukraine when “allies agree and conditions are met.”

READ: Turkiye expects Sweden to fulfil pledges under Madrid memorandum for NATO bid