By Janis, Laizans and Sabine Siebold
VILNIUS (Reuters) – NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg was scrambling on Monday night to break the deadlock over Sweden’s NATO membership bid after convening Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson ahead of a summit in Lithuania.
Sweden and Finland applied for NATO membership last year, abandoning policies of military non-alignment that had lasted through the decades of the Cold War in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
While Finland’s NATO membership was green-lighted in April, Turkey and Hungary have yet to clear Sweden’s bid. Stockholm has been working to join the bloc at the summit in Vilnius.
“It is still possible to have a positive decision on Sweden in Vilnius,” Stoltenberg told a news conference before hosting the two leaders on the eve of a NATO summit in the Lithuanian capital.
Erdogan has held out for months saying Sweden’s accession hinged on the implementation of a deal reached last summer during the alliance’s summit in Madrid, adding that no one should expect compromises from Ankara.
Erdogan and Kristersson appeared relaxed ahead of the meeting with the Swedish leader joking about parking his plane next to the bigger Turkish aircraft at Vilnius airport.
But the three initially were locked in talks for more than two hours before taking a break. Further negotiations were expected to stretch later into the evening, diplomats said.
Turkey says Sweden has not done enough against people Turkey sees as terrorists, mainly members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that is considered a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the EU and the United States.
Erdogan appeared to raise the ante again on Monday saying the European Union should open the way for Ankara’s accession to the bloc before Turkey’s parliament approves Sweden’s bid to join the NATO military alliance.
The United States and its allies have sought to pressure Ankara for months. Some NATO partners believe that Turkey, which requested in October 2021 to buy $20 billion of Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) F-16 fighters and nearly 80 modernization kits for its existing warplanes, has been using Swedish membership to pressure Washington on the warplanes.
US President Joe Biden is due to hold face-to-face talks with Erdogan during the summit.
(Additional reporting by Andrius Sytas in Vilnius, Anna Ringstrom, Johan Ahlander in Stockholm and Ezgi Erkoyun in Istanbul; writing by John Irish, Editing by William Maclean)
