US President Joe Biden has signed protocols on the ratification of agreements on Finland’s and Sweden’s accession to NATO on Tuesday.
Biden signed the documents during a ceremony in the White House. He called on other NATO member countries to approve these countries’ joining the alliance as soon as possible.
US Congress passed a resolution on the ratification of documents on these countries accession to the Alliance last week. Under US laws, the ratification procedure is executed by the president upon the Senate’s consent. Biden hailed the Senate voting results, noting that this was the fastest Senate process for NATO expansion protocols since 1981.
Stockholm and Helsinki applied for NATO membership on May 18 but the accession process was blocked by Turkey, which demanded these outlaw Kurdish organizations as terrorist, extradite persons accused of terrorism or involvement in the attempted coup in 2016, and lift the bans on weapons supplies to Turkey.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held talks with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto and Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andresson, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on June 28, ahead of a NATO summit in Madrid. The talks yielded a memorandum on Sweden’s and Finland’s accession to NATO, which is to be ratified by all the alliance’s member states.
