Newspaper Svenska Dagbladet reports that Sweden's defence minister Peter Hultqvist on Tuesday received a classified letter from Mattis that apparently outlines a tougher US position.
Sweden was among 122 countries that in July voted in favour of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Sweden's foreign minister Margot Wallström has indicated that Sweden intends to sign the treaty, along with other UN member states, on September 20th.
"The government's position on these weapons has been well-known for a long time," Wallström has previously told Svenska Dagbladet. She said that the government's analysis suggested that "bilateral and multilateral defence cooperation will not be affected" by Sweden signing the treaty.
The five countries classified as nuclear weapons states under the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT, have all boycotted the UN treaty, including the US.
Sweden also signed a Statement of Intent over joint defence cooperation with the US in June 2016.
Wilhelm Agrell, a politics professor at Lund university, told news agency TT that he does not believe Sweden signing the new treaty would have any immediate consequences.
"But it will definitively lead to even more concrete expressions of irritation from the American side," said Agrell. "This will perhaps be seen in bilateral contacts - visits at the highest level and such like," he added.
Radio Sweden has tried to reach Peter Hultqvist for a comment.
PlastBlastUA on August 31st, 2017 at 11:31 UTC »
US is afraid that there would be no deterrent, stopping swedes from deploying the ultimate weapon of doom - surströmming.
0punk on August 31st, 2017 at 11:10 UTC »
Does this have to do with the meetings happening at the UN in Vienna? I live down the street from there and we have a nuclear physicist staying with us in a room we rent on AirBNB.
He described the meetings as extremely boring, basically consisting of going over the treaties in minute detail, something like "Please go to page 37 of section 2.3C, paragraph 7 sentence 4. Here the word "source" is used, could you please clarify what is meant by this word." He said that the specific wording in these treaties can greatly impact parts of countries economies, and the country doing the most talking is Iran. This leads me to believe that the situation is a bit more complicated than "do not sign this nuclear weapons ban" and probably more along the lines of "do not sign this document that greatly benefits Iran."
votarak on August 31st, 2017 at 09:53 UTC »
I'm not surprised that the US would try to sway countries to do certain things that is what great powers always have done. But I do wonder if Sweden is the only country to receive this message or have other countries also received it?
Also the article mentioned that the 5 recognized nuclear powers have boycotted the signing, does anyone know if India and Pakistan (Israel should probably also be included) have done the same?