Budapest, March 27 (AFP\/APP): The Hungarian parliament, dominated by Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s right-wing Fidesz party, ratified Finland’s NATO membership Monday after months of diplomatically charged delay.<\/p>\n
A large majority of lawmakers — 182 votes for versus six against — approved the accession of the Nordic country into the military alliance.
\nThe vote means that 29 out of 30 NATO member state parliaments have ratified Finland’s accession, with the last — Turkey’s assembly — expected to also give Helsinki the nod next month.<\/p>\n
“Thank you for the decision with clear numbers!” said Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin on Twitter after the vote.<\/p>\n
NATO’s expansion into Finland — a country with a 1,340-kilometre (830-mile) border with Russia — will roughly double the length of the bloc’s current frontier with its Cold War-era foe.<\/p>\n
Finland had initially aimed to join together with fellow NATO aspirant Sweden.<\/p>\n
“The NATO membership of Finland and Sweden will strengthen the security of the whole Alliance,” said Marin.<\/p>\n
“It is in everyone’s interest that Sweden also becomes a member of NATO before the Vilnius Summit,” she said.<\/p>\n
Helsinki and Stockholm ended decades of military non-alignment and decided to join the world’s most powerful defence alliance in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Their applications were accepted at a June 2022 NATO summit but the bids still needed to be ratified by all alliance member parliaments.<\/p>\n
The nationalist Orban, who nursed close relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin until the invasion, said in December that the ratification process would begin in February.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Budapest, March 27 (AFP\/APP): The Hungarian parliament, dominated by Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s right-wing Fidesz party, ratified Finland’s NATO membership Monday after months of diplomatically charged delay. A large majority of lawmakers — 182 votes for versus six against — approved the accession of the […]<\/p>\n
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