Finland has been told by Nato chiefs it could take up to a year for the country to join the military alliance.<\/p>\n
The government in Helsinki had been promised the process of joining Nato would be \u201csmooth and swift\u201d.<\/p>\n
But Finland\u2019s Foreign Minister, Pekka Haavisto, told journalists that Nato\u2019s Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, had said the ratification process could take between four and 12 months.<\/p>\n
This is the period during which the legislatures of Nato\u2019s 30 member states would give their formal support for Finland\u2019s application.<\/p>\n
This matters because during the period between application and accession \u2013 known as the “grey zone” – Finland would not enjoy the full security guarantees that Nato provides.<\/p>\n
Mr Haavisto said Boris Johnson had given a \u201cvery clear statement how the UK – during the \u2018grey zone\u2019 – could help us in many ways, including military means\u201d.<\/p>\n
He revealed Finland had been holding bilateral talks with France, Spain, Germany and Turkey to try to secure similar military support during the application process.
\nstory by James Landale<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Finland has been told by Nato chiefs it could take up to a year for the country to join the military alliance. The government in Helsinki had been promised the process of joining Nato would be \u201csmooth and swift\u201d. But Finland\u2019s Foreign Minister, Pekka Haavisto, told journalists that Nato\u2019s Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, had said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":21600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[6728,11967,5090,157,8256,5335,5345,5575,66,2264,9907,5572,4802,6426,5655,4293,1378,2570,12605,3080,6348],"class_list":["post-21598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-alliance","tag-bilateral","tag-boris","tag-boris-johnson","tag-chiefs","tag-finland","tag-foreign-minister","tag-france","tag-germany","tag-government","tag-jens-stoltenberg","tag-military","tag-nato","tag-ratification","tag-security","tag-spain","tag-sweden","tag-turkey","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-us"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}