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Added on the 11/06/2022 15:11:57 - Copyright : AFPTV - First images
The United States welcomes Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's submission to parliament of Sweden's NATO membership and hopes for approval as soon as possible. "We welcome that step," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller tells reporters, voicing hope that the bill "will be considered in the Turkish parliament and passed as soon as possible." SOUNDBITE
NATO leaders agreed at a summit in Vilnius on Tuesday that they will invite Ukraine to become a member when certain conditions are reached, alliance head Jens Stoltenberg says. "We also made clear that we will issue an invitation for Ukraine to join NATO when allies agree and conditions are met," Stoltenberg tells journalists after the talks. SOUNDBITE
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken voices hope that a successful offensive by Ukraine would force Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss ending its invasion. "Success in the counteroffensive would do two things -- it would strengthen its position at any negotiating table that emerges, and it may have the effect as well of actually causing Putin to finally focus on negotiating an end to the war that he started," Blinken tells a joint news conference with Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani. SOUNDBITE
Germany's Defence Minister Boris Pistorius says he believes the EU member will manage to send a first battalion of tanks to war-torn Ukraine by April. "I think we could deliver at least one battalion in the first four months of this year. Three months maybe. And then we have to proceed as fast as possible of course," he tells reporters while on a visit to Warsaw. SOUNDBITE
A prosecutor in the MH17 trial says she hopes for favourable outcome but that it was also important "that we could speak about what happened openly in court" as a Dutch court rules in the trial of four men over the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 above Ukraine in 2014. Prosecutors have demanded life sentences for the suspects although the men are unlikely to serve time if convicted. SOUNDBITE