Sweden's Parliament endorses country joining NATO

STOCKHOLM, March 23 (Bernama-Xinhua) -- Sweden's lawmakers overwhelmingly voted on Wednesday in favour of the country joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).

The vote was 269 in favour and 37 against. Forty-three lawmakers were absent. Two of the eight parties represented in the country's Parliament (Riksdag) -- the Left Party and the Green Party -- voted against the motion.

Hungary and Türkiye remain the last two hold-outs among NATO's 30 members to ratify the accession of Sweden and Finland to the military alliance, reported Xinhua.

Also on Wednesday, a proposal tabled by the Left Party and the Green Party to outlaw nuclear weapons on Sweden's territory in both peace and wartime was voted down in the Riksdag.

 Sweden and Finland dropped their decades-long policies of military non-alignment and applied to join NATO last May.

Türkiye's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed on Friday to ask his country's Parliament to vote on Finland's NATO membership bid, but delayed that of Sweden, saying Finland has taken concrete steps to address Türkiye's security concerns.

--BERNAMA-XINHUA