Mikkeli (Finland) - (AFP) - The Finnish Foreign Minister announced Friday that his country will host a tripartite meeting with Sweden and Turkey later this month, after Ankara announced its opposition to the accession of the two northern countries to NATO.

"Representatives of Finland, Sweden and Turkey will meet in Finland in August," Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto told reporters.

The minister did not specify a date for the meeting, but his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu, had referred to an upcoming tripartite meeting on August 26.

This year Sweden and Finland abandoned their long-standing non-alignment policy and announced that they intended to join NATO after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in February.

And ratified the United States, along with more than half of the member states in NATO, on the requests to join Sweden and Finland. However, the mechanism for joining the bloc requires the unanimity of member states.

Turkey is the only member that opposes the accession of the two countries, and calls for Helsinki and Stockholm to make concessions before giving its approval to their requests.

Haavisto said the meeting scheduled for this month will be a follow-up to discussions based on a memorandum signed by the three countries in Madrid in June.

In that memorandum, Sweden and Finland agreed to "accelerate" the study of deportation requests submitted by Ankara to recover people suspected of involvement in the 2016 coup attempt or of belonging to banned Kurdish factions.

Last week, Sweden announced the deportation of the first Kurdish citizen under the agreement, but the Turkish Minister of Justice said Thursday that Ankara is calling on Sweden to hand over "terrorists" and not just "ordinary criminals" if it wants to join NATO.