Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed to receive Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Christerson, who had expressed the day before his readiness to go "immediately" to Turkey to obtain Ankara's approval for his country's entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
"The new Swedish prime minister asked to be received. I told our friends: Give him an appointment to come, we will discuss these issues with him in our country," Erdogan said on his plane returning from Azerbaijan, according to several Turkish media outlets, today, Friday.
Erdogan, who threatens to prevent Sweden and Finland from joining NATO, reiterated that the Turkish parliament will not ratify the accession of the two northern countries as long as they do not meet the extradition requests submitted by Ankara.
"These terrorists must be arrested...and handed over to us," he said.
The Turkish president accuses Sweden and Finland of protecting Kurdish fighters, especially from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the People's Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara considers "terrorist".
So far, 28 out of 30 NATO countries have ratified the accession of Sweden and Finland.
Hungary and Turkey are the only two countries that have not finally agreed to the accession of the two countries.
Sweden's new foreign minister, Tobias Billstrom, hailed the "very positive" news about the visit to Ankara, upon his arrival in Finland on his first official visit since Christerson took office.
"The scope of negotiations will be wide" on the agreement signed last June between the three parties, he added.
During a NATO summit in Madrid at the end of June, the Turkish, Swedish and Finnish foreign ministers signed a memorandum opening the way for these two countries to join NATO.
But the Turkish president threatened to use the veto if his conditions were not met.