Not to be left out, in the same month Finland hosted a staff officer
course for NATO personnel organized by the international center of the Finnish Defence Forces. "The course involves planning and management of peacekeeping operations. Taking part will be officers from NATO countries as well as non-members who are part of the Partnership for Peace."
The training was "the first time that a course of the NATO School in the German city of Oberammergau is held in a different location" and "there has also been talk of holding more NATO training courses in Finland." (15)
Public opposition to NATO membership remained high in both Finland and Sweden and a major propaganda blitz was launched in the "free press" of both nations which has intensified in the interim, enough to have some effect in recent polls.
The following month Finnish Defense Minister Jyri Hakamies, speaking at the Atlantic Council of Finland, said "With Denmark, Norway and Iceland already serving as NATO members...the joining of Finland and Sweden would make the Nordic bloc an influential force within the military alliance" and to make the plan more transparent added "NATO membership would further the Nordics' position in the face of Russia's growing power." (17)
Hakamies was also quoted in a news dispatch called "Finland's defence minister calls for Finland, Sweden to join NATO", as saying that "a group of skilled and active Nordic countries would be seen as a positive thing in NATO. With a combined population of 24 million, the bloc of Nordic countries would not be a complete lightweight in decision making either." (18)
May was a busy month for Hakamies, but not so busy that he couldn't find the time to co-author with Swedish Defense Minister Sten Tolgfors an article for the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter endorsing joining NATO air surveillance operations. "The defence ministers added that the Barents Region [shared by northern Scandinavia and Russia] has become an increasingly influential location, due to the discovery of oil." (19)
In June Finland, which had "recently increased cooperation with the alliance and now also has soldiers in military operations under NATO command in Kosovo and Afghanistan," hosted 1,000 troops from 25 NATO and partnership countries in a disaster exercise that was "largest international exercise held in Finland." (20)
At the beginning of the month the US Carrier Strike Group 12 led the annual BALTOPS (Baltic Operations), the largest international exercise organized in the Baltic region "including ships, submarines, aircraft, and ground force elements from NATO and PFP nations, including Denmark; Estonia; Finland; France; Germany; Latvia; Lithuania; Norway; Poland; Russia; Sweden; the United Kingdom and the United States." (21)
Before June had ended the new Finnish foreign minister, Alexander Stubb, met with NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer in Brussels on Friday - "the first such meeting in six years" - where the two "discussed NATO's operations in Kosovo and Afghanistan. Finland will take the lead in NATO's combat division of the Kosovo Force, the KFOR, in August. By then the number of Finnish peacekeepers in the force will rise to 500."
Stubb "emerged from [the] meeting...calling for more regular contact with the alliance" and said that "biannual meetings between Finland and NATO would be pencilled in from now on." (22)
In July Swedish defense chief Sten Tolgfors repeated the message in his jointly written article of two months earlier and "suggested sharing airbases with Norway" and argued "that NATO is a natural source of Swedish security."
"The Nordic countries cannot by themselves generate sufficient political and military weight."- (23)
Early in the following month the Pentagon announced that it had established its first-ever defense cooperation office in Finland, "part of a defense equipment cooperation deal between the defense ministries of the two nations." (24)
Weeks later Sweden's Liberal Party called for the country to join NATO and to boost its troop contingent in Afghanistan from 350 to 500 soldiers, its defense policy spokesperson Allan Widman saying "Sweden ought to send more soldiers to Afghanistan, participate in NATO's rapid reaction force, as well as join the military alliance's air patrols over the Baltic region" and that the recently concluded war in the Caucasus "makes Swedish NATO membership all the more important." (25)
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