NATO Chief calls summit ‘historic’ as Turkey backs adding Sweden to Alliance

LITHUANIA: President Joe Biden said Tuesday this year’s NATO summit represents a “historic moment,” as the security bloc prepares to enlarge while tackling issues around the grinding war in Ukraine.

“This is a historic moment,” Biden said to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. “Adding Finland and Sweden to NATO is consequential. And your leadership really matters. And we agree on the language that you propose, relative to the future of Ukraine being able to join NATO.”

Stoltenberg said Tuesday he is “absolutely confident” that Turkey’s parliament will admit a new member, Sweden. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s president continued to push for his nation’s inclusion in the security alliance – a step that NATO members seem unlikely to take at this high-stakes summit in Lithuania’s capital.

“NATO will give Ukraine security,” tweeted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “Ukraine will make the alliance stronger.”

Allies were debating the wording of a final joint text, but there is consensus that Ukraine joining NATO while Russia’s invasion is ongoing is not under consideration.

Membership in the middle of a war would require the alliance to apply the principle of “an attack on one is an attack on all” enshrined in the bloc’s Article 5 – putting the U.S. and Western nations in direct conflict with Moscow.

Zelenskyy has said he accepts that situation, but shortly before leaders gathered for their meeting Tuesday, he tweeted complaints about what he said were “signals that certain wording is being discussed without Ukraine.”

Zelenskyy, who is expected to attend the summit Wednesday, said “vague wording about ‘conditions’” was being added, while there was no timeframe for inviting Ukraine to join NATO.

“It seems there is no readiness, neither to invite Ukraine to NATO nor to make it a member of the alliance,” Zelenskyy said.

(VOA/AP/AFP/Reuters)