ROME, April 4. /TASS/. Stockholm is ready to contribute to strengthening NATO’s eastern flank as part of the bloc, Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said.

"We are ready to send our troops to strengthen the eastern flank of the North Atlantic Alliance, particularly in the Baltic countries," he said in an interview with Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper.

Billstrom expressed hope that Hungarian and Turkish lawmakers would soon ratify Sweden’s application to join NATO.

He also pointed out that Sweden’s joint military projects with Finland, Norway and Denmark would not affect its commitments to NATO.

In May 2022, Helsinki and Stockholm submitted their applications to join the US-led alliance but the process was blocked by Ankara who demanded that the two Nordic countries extradite people to Turkey suspected of terrorism and being involved in the 2016 coup, and bans on weapons supplies to Turkey should be lifted. Talks between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Finnish President Sauli Niinisto, Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg took place in Madrid on June 28. As a result, a memorandum was signed making it possible for Sweden and Finland to join NATO. Finland will officially become a NATO member on Tuesday.

A major scandal erupted between Turkey and Sweden over the burning of the Quran near the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm in early 2023. On January 21, Danish politician Rasmus Paludan who leads the anti-Islamic far-right extremist Stram Kurs party publicly burned the Quran in front of the Turkish diplomatic mission. In his speech, he criticized Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and displayed a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad. Erdogan said that following this and other anti-Turkish rallies in Stockholm, Sweden should not expect any support from Ankara for its NATO membership bid.