Finland does not intend to bring nuclear weapons into its territory after joining NATO, the Yle news portal reported on Monday, quoting Finnish President Sauli Niinisto.
According to the portal, Niinisto, when speaking at the opening of a national defense course, also said that “there is no indication that anyone is offering the Finns such weapons.”
The Finnish president added that “nuclear weapons are an integral part of NATO’s deterrence forces,” but that they are “a tool of prevention, not an end in themselves,” the news portal noted.
Earlier, Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto, when commenting on the government’s draft proposal for NATO membership, said that Finland was not aiming to deploy such weapons.
On May 18, Finland and Sweden applied for NATO membership, however, their accession was immediately blocked by Turkey who demanded that these countries declare Kurdish organizations as terrorist, extradite to Ankara those individuals accused of terrorist activity or the participation in the 2016 state coup attempt as well as lift bans on arms 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. —-TASS
