ANKARA, May 20 (Reuters) – Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan will tell NATO foreign ministers this week that the next NATO leaders’ summit, set for Ankara in July, should reaffirm the alliance’s unity and integrity, a foreign ministry source said on Wednesday.
• Fidan will attend a meeting of NATO foreign ministers on Thursday and Friday in Sweden’s Helsingborg.
• Turkey will host the next NATO leaders’ summit in Ankara on July 7-8.
• During the meeting of NATO foreign ministers, Fidan will share Turkey’s expectations regarding the Ankara summit and brief allied countries on Turkey’s efforts to ensure that it serves as a high-level event reaffirming the NATO’s unity and integrity, the source said.
• Fidan will also provide information on Turkey’s contributions to NATO and highlight “Turkey’s best practices regarding the conversion of defence expenditure into capabilities”.
• Fidan will emphasise the need to develop transatlantic defence industry cooperation within NATO without any restrictions.
• A separate Turkish diplomatic source said members of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI), a partnership forum with several Middle Eastern countries, as well as Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and Australia — known as the Indo-Pacific Four — may be invited to the Ankara summit at the foreign minister level.
• The source said that all NATO allies will agree in the coming days on the summit invitees and the issue may be discussed at the meeting in Sweden.
(Reporting by Huseyin Hayatsever and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Daren Butler and Philippa Fletcher)
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