Sweden is unable to fulfil all the demands posed by Turkey for it to join NATO and does not intend to do so, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told a defence think tank conference on Sunday.

“Turkey has confirmed that we have done what we promised to do,” Kristersson said at the Folk och Försvar conference in Sälen, western Sweden.

“But they are also saying that they have demands that we have not fulfilled and that we do not intend to. And now the decision is up to Turkey,” he said.

Kristersson remains convinced that Turkey will agree to Sweden’s accession. “We just don’t know when,” he said.

Sweden and its eastern neighbour Finland made application to join the Western alliance in May in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February.

Turkish approval as a member of NATO is required, but it has posed a series of demands, including for the extradition of Turkish citizens it sees as terrorists.

As a member of the Western defence alliance, Sweden is willing, among other things, to participate in NATO’s joint missile defence system and in air patrols over the Baltic states, the Black Sea and Iceland, Kristersson said in his speech.

Source: dpa/MIA