Turkey said Saturday it was "not in a position" to ratify Sweden's NATO membership, despite a series of steps taken by Stockholm to meet Ankara's demands.

"We are not in a position to send a (ratification) law to the parliament," President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's foreign policy adviser Ibrahim Kalin told reporters.

Sweden and its Nordic neighbour Finland dropped decades of military non-alignment and applied to join the Western defence alliance in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year.

Turkey and Hungary remain the only NATO members to have still not ratified the bids by votes in parliament.

Ankara argues that Sweden, in particular, has failed to fulfil a series of commitments both countries made at a NATO summit in June.

Erdogan then lifted his objections to their applications in return for pledges to crack down on Kurdish groups that Ankara views as "terrorists".

Sweden has since approved a constitutional amendment that will make it possible to pass tougher anti-terror laws.

But Kalin said it will take at least until June for Sweden's parliament to vote through the measures, and that Ankara would wait for all the Swedish legislation to pass before it acts.

"It will take (Sweden) about six months to write and pass the new laws," Kalin said. "They will need a bit more time."

Ukraine says it is 'de facto' part of NATO
London (AFP) Jan 13, 2023 - Ukraine has effectively become a NATO member, its defence minister has said, despite the military alliance's reluctance to get embroiled in a wider conflict with Russia.

Oleksiy Reznikov said he was confident that Western allies would shed their inhibitions about supplying Ukraine with heavier weapons such as tanks and fighter jets.

"This concern about the next level of escalation, for me, is some kind of protocol," he told the BBC in an interview broadcast Friday, dismissing NATO fears about provoking Russia.

"Ukraine as a country, and the armed forces of Ukraine, became (a) member of NATO," the defence minister added.

"De facto, not de jure (in law). Because we have weaponry, and the understanding of how to use it."

Formal membership would require the rest of NATO to defend Ukraine -- and Russia has already warned of the risks of a nuclear conflict erupting.

Short of that, Western countries including the United States have been supplying armoured fighting vehicles and rocketry to Ukraine, but balked so far at sending long-range missiles and heavier tanks.

Tobias Ellwood, who chairs the House of Commons defence committee in Britain, has urged London to supply Ukraine's forces with heavy battle tanks.

"NATO essentially has been benched," the former British army officer told the BBC on Tuesday.

"We should be doing far more to put this fire out and we're not doing that."

Reznikov said there should be no controversy to Ukraine fulfilling its long-held ambition of joining NATO.

"I'm sure that in the near future, we'll become member of NATO, de jure," he said.

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