Officials from Turkey, Finland and Sweden agreed today to continue meeting in the coming months to discuss security issues that Turkey has made conditional on allowing the two Scandinavian countries to join its military alliance NATO.

Officials from the three countries held their first meeting today in the city of Vandaa in southern Finland.

Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said the meeting was aimed at establishing contacts and setting goals for cooperation, which the countries agreed to by signing a memorandum of understanding at the NATO summit in Madrid in June.

“The participants discussed specific steps to implement the Tripartite Memorandum and agreed that meetings at the expert level will continue in this format in the fall,” the Finnish Foreign Ministry said in a statement released after the meeting.

The two Scandinavian countries applied to join NATO in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but faced opposition from Turkey, which accused them of imposing an arms embargo on Ankara and supporting so-called terrorist organizations.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has demanded that Sweden and Finland extradite suspects wanted by Turkey on terrorism charges, while the Nordic countries say they have not agreed to any specific extraditions by signing the memorandum.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland did not disclose the place and time of today’s meeting, but later said that it took place in the city of Vandaa, not far from the capital Helsinki.

^{Source: APE-MEB, Reuters}