Finnish Foreign Minister 'optimistic' on resolving disagreements with Turkey over NATO

Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto. File photoANKARA, May 22.Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto, in an interview with Yle TV channel, said that he was «optimistic» about resolving disagreements with Turkey on NATO membership. Earlier, the Financial Times wrote that Turkey blocked the start of the process of considering the application for Finland and Sweden to join NATO. Erdogan said that Ankara cannot say «yes» to the membership of Finland and Sweden in NATO, because it cannot believe their assurances about relations with representatives of the Kurdistan Workers' Party banned in Turkey. If Turkey agrees, NATO, according to Erdogan, «will not be a security organization, but will become a place where there will be many representatives of terrorists.» Countries cannot be accepted into an alliance without the unanimous approval of all its members.The Finnish Foreign Ministry estimated the timing of solving problems with Turkey on NATO membership «I am optimistic that the problems will be resolved, but this is not a problem,» the Turkish newspaper Star quoted the Foreign Minister as saying. Russia has repeatedly noted that NATO is aimed at confrontation. Press Secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov stated that further expansion of the alliance would not bring greater security to Europe, NATO has an aggressive character. At the same time, he noted that he did not consider the entry of Sweden and Finland into NATO an existential threat to Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a conversation with Niinistö, noted that abandoning the traditional policy of military neutrality would be erroneous, since there are no threats to Finland's security. In his opinion, a change in the country's foreign policy could have a negative impact on Russian-Finnish relations, which for many years were built in the spirit of good neighborliness and partnership cooperation, were mutually beneficial. jpg» />NATO has fallen into a trap that will seriously weaken the alliance, writes NI