Today, Turkey finally greenlights Sweden's NATO membership. NATO leaders meet in Lithuania, Israel's controversial judicial reform makes progress, and the UN warns the Sudan conflict could escalate. From TLDR News, this is your daily briefing for Tuesday 11th July 2023. Sweden is finally on course to join NATO, more than a year after making its application, after Turkey's President Erdogan dropped his opposition to Sweden's membership bid.
Now, there's still a number of steps necessary before Sweden actually becomes NATO's 32nd member state, but the main hurdle appears to have been overcome. ahead of the crucial nato leaders summit in lithuania and after hours of talks nato chief jen stoltenberg said erdogan has agreed to forward the accession protocol for sweden to the grand national assembly as soon as possible and work closely with the assembly to ensure ratification nato applications need the approval of every single member state and turkey had been the final member blocking sweden's entry president erdogan had accused swedish authorities of failing to sufficiently act against kurdish groups that it considered terrorists plus other incidents like koran burnings also complicate things as a side note hungary also hasn't officially approved Sweden's application, but has since expressed its support, with the foreign minister saying today, completing the ratification process is now just a technical matter. Anyway, Turkey's concerns have evidently been sufficiently addressed. In a joint statement, Sweden reaffirmed its commitment to work with Turkey against terrorism, and also pledged to support efforts to revive Turkey's application to join the EU, something that Erdogan had called for hours before.
NATO has also agreed to establish a new role of special coordinator for counter-terrorism. To briefly go back to Turkey's efforts to join the EU, its membership application has been frozen for more than a decade, and EU-Turkey relations have soured in recent years. Realistically, Sweden's commitment to support the reopening of talks is unlikely to move the dial, and the prospect of Turkey joining the bloc remains basically dead for now. What it might do, however, is help to make progress on things like economic cooperation, visa rights, the customs union, and so on.
It's also probably no coincidence that not long after the NATO announcement, the US announced it would move forward with a transfer of F-16 fighter jets for Turkey The announcement that Turkey would support Sweden entry into NATO did not come with a timeline but for reference it took the Turkish Parliament two weeks to ratify Finland membership earlier this year Sweden efforts to join the military alliance began last year when both Finland and Sweden made historic shifts in their military policy last year following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Here's TLDR's very own Jack Kelly speaking to the chair of NATO's military committee, Admiral Rob Bauer, at the Vilnius Summit, about what Sweden can contribute to NATO. Well, the good news for all of us is that with the accession of Finland and Sweden, And of course, we have more territory to defend, which is a concern, might be a concern to some. But the good news is they bring very capable forces to help us and to help themselves and to help us as a collective.
So I think we are in a very good position with those two nations because they have very modern armed forces, because they were working with us already for a long time. So the integration in military terms in our armed forces, in the structures, in the military structures, is going to be very easy, as we now see with Finland already. And militarily, there's another advantage, and that is that the defense of the Baltic region will become easier for NATO because basically the vulnerability for nations like the Baltic States and Poland is going down because of Finland and Sweden to their north and northeast. So I think in many ways it is good news.
It is contrary to what Putin wanted. He wanted less NATO. He gets more NATO. He wanted a less united NATO.
He has a more united NATO. So in many ways he made a strategic mistake with terrible consequences for Ukraine, but I think in terms of our alliance, it has strengthened the alliance in a way that nobody basically foresaw. There's more on the way, but be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to make the daily briefing part of your daily routine, or just search for us on your podcast app to listen along. As we've said, NATO's annual summit is taking place this week, in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius.
One of the main aims of the summit is to make clear to Russian leader Vladimir Putin that the West are united, and that they're not going to give up on Ukraine. It's been reported today that the UK, US, France, and Germany are set to offer Israel-style security guarantees to Ukraine. This new defense scheme would, in essence, create a legally binding pledge for those countries to continue their military support for the key of government. This way Ukraine still gets some code of flight support without full NATO membership as that was blocked by both the US and Germany As part of this it claimed that this agreement would include a promise for training Ukrainian troops intelligence sharing and assistance with bringing Ukraine's armed forces in line with NATO standards.
The specific terms of the agreement are expected to be finalized in the next few days, with a final announcement being made soon after that. On the subject of Ukraine joining NATO, Ukraine's President Zelensky today said it was unprecedented and absurd that NATO had given no time frame for Ukraine to join the alliance, adding, uncertainty is weakness, and I will openly discuss this at the summit. So that's what's been happening with Ukraine. Let's move and discuss the latest news from Israel.
Early this morning, the Israel Knesset passed the first reading of the highly controversial judicial reform bill. The bill is designed to give the government more say over appointing judges. Critics claim that this is both a power grab by the government and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a conflict of interest on the matter, as he's currently on trial for fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes. For his part, he denies these claims.
The bill itself has caused controversy throughout its passage, with a huge number of protests having taken place across Israel, trying to stop it. This resulted in Netanyahu postponing the bill in March. Last month, though, Netanyahu revived the bill and continued talks with the opposition. In these talks, the opposition succeeded in removing one of the most contentious parts of the bill, a part that allowed the parliament to overrule Supreme Court decisions with a simple majority.
Today, 64 lawmakers voted for the bill and 56 voted against. Members of Netanyahu's coalition stood and cheered as it passed, while opposition lawmakers shouted shame. It should be noted that two more readings are needed before it comes into force. This could happen by as early as the end of the month.
The UN Secretary General has warned that Sudan is on the brink of a full-scale civil war, as fierce fighting in the country enters its 12th week. The comments came after the country's health ministry said on Saturday that an airstrike by the Sudanese army had killed at least 22 people in Omdurman, the country's largest city just across the river from the capital of Khartoum. UN Chief Antonio Guterres said he remains deeply concerned that the conflict could destabilize the entire region, adding that there is an utter disregard for humanitarian and human rights law that's dangerous and disturbing. Fighting broke out in early April between the country armed forces and the Rapid Support Forces or RSF which is a powerful paramilitary group What effectively a power struggle between Sudanese leader General Abdel Fattah al and RSF leader General Mohammed Hamdan Degarlo has left at least 3 dead and 6 injured though the actual numbers are likely higher Nearly 3 million people have been displaced from their homes, with almost 700,000 of that number fleeing to neighbouring countries.
Egypt will host a meeting this week of Sudan's neighbouring states, with the goal of establishing effective mechanisms to find a peaceful settlement to the violence. We end the main section of the Daily Briefing with some positive news. The United States has announced that it has destroyed its last declared chemical weapons, ending a decades-long effort to clear out and destroy a stockpile of chemical weapons that totaled more than 30,000 tons at the end of the Cold War. President Biden said, I'm proud to announce that the United States has safely destroyed the final munition in that stockpile, bringing us one step closer to a world free from the horrors of chemical weapons.
Workers at the Bluegrass Army Depot destroyed the final munitions, rockets filled with sarin nerve agent that had been stored there since the 1940s. Under the Chemical Weapons Convention, which came into force in 1997, The US had a deadline of September 30th this year to finish destroying its chemical weapons stockpile. That's all we have time for on YouTube, but the briefing isn't over. That's because we have a look at the latest in the UK's mortgage crisis in the extended ad-free edition of the daily briefing, only on Nebula.
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