Biden Considering Trip to Finland in July

US President Joe Biden is mulling visiting Finland in July, NBC reported on Friday.

US officials told the channel that a possible visit to coincide with a NATO summit in July in Lithuania had been discussed for several months, but no final decision had yet been made.

An official said any visit to the Scandinavian country, which became the 31st member of the bloc in early April, would be for a summit of several countries, not a bilateral meeting.

The White House National Security Council declined to comment on NBC.

Sweden and Finland applied to join NATO in May 2022, but the accession process was blocked by Turkey, which demanded that Stockholm and Helsinki declare Kurdish organizations as terrorist organizations and hand over some individuals whom Ankara accused of terrorism or involvement in the 2016 coup attempt.

In an effort to resolve these issues before the NATO summit in 2022, Turkiye, Finland, and Sweden signed a memorandum containing a list of specific steps that Ankara believed the Nordic countries should take.

The Turkish parliament approved a bill to certify Finland's accession to NATO on March 30. And on April 4, Finland officially joined the military bloc.

NATO is scheduled to hold a summit in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, on July 11-12.