Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said on Wednesday (June 1) the Nordic country would continue its dialogue with Turkey over Ankara's objections concerning its application to join the NATO military alliance, Reuters reports.
"I'm looking forward to further constructive meetings with Turkey in the near future," she told a news conference with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
"Our responses to demands and also questions from Turkey we will take directly with Turkey and also of course sort out any issues and misunderstandings that there might be."
Sweden and Finland both applied to join NATO last month but their bids have faced unexpected objections from Ankara, which accuses them of being safe havens for Kurdish militants and wants them to reverse an arms exports ban.
At the news conference, the U.N. chief said he was hopeful of a solution to alleviate the impact of the conflict in Ukraine on global food supplies, but cautioned any agreement was still some way off.
"I think that there is progress, but we are not yet there. These are complex things and the fact that everything is interlinked, makes the negotiation particularly complex," he said.
With Russia controlling or effectively blockading all Ukrainian Black Sea ports, grain shipments from Ukraine have stalled since the conflict began while Moscow has blamed Western sanctions for disrupting exports of both grain and fertiliser.
