She is traveling to Morocco on Saturday before heading to Portugal, the final stop of her tour, on Monday. The first lady arrived in the Egyptian capital from Amman, Jordan, where she attended the wedding of Crown Prince Hussein and Saudi architect Rajwa Alsei f on Thursday. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, whose country is the dominant member of NATO, also said on Thursday that “we fully anticipate” Sweden joining by the Vilnius summit.ĬAIRO: Jill Biden arrived in Cairo on Friday, on the second leg of her six-day trip across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe that seeks to empower women and promote education for young people. Stoltenberg has said that goal is “absolutely possible.” Many of the ministers who attended the Oslo meeting said they wanted to see Sweden join before a NATO summit in Lithuania’s capital Vilnius on July 11-12. Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom on Thursday said his country has fulfilled all its commitments to join, and “it is time for Turkiye and Hungary to start the ratification of the Swedish membership to NATO.” It and Hungary are the only two member countries yet to ratify Sweden’s membership bid.įinland formally joined the alliance in April.Įrdogan has accused Sweden of being a haven for “terrorists,” especially members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). NATO member Turkiye has dragged its feet over admitting Sweden to the military alliance. The statement said the visit would extend into Sunday and Stoltenberg would “have bilateral meetings with President Erdogan and with senior Turkish officials.” The Turkish president was last week re-elected to serve another five-year term. The NATO statement said Stoltenberg would attend Erdogan’s inauguration on Saturday. Stoltenberg on Thursday said during a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Norway that he would soon visit Ankara to work toward Sweden joining “as early as possible,” after speaking with Erdogan by phone earlier this week. The trip comes as pressure builds on Erdogan to drop his opposition to Sweden joining NATO. Lebanon’s top public prosecutor said in January that Beirut could delay cooperating with foreign investigations pending progress on the local probes.īRUSSELS: NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg will visit Turkiye at the weekend to attend the inauguration of re-elected President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and hold talks with him, the alliance said Friday. Riad and Raja Salameh have denied diverting public funds and neither Hoayek nor her lawyer have spoken publicly about the charges. The three have been charged in two separate cases in Lebanon. Neither Salameh nor his lawyer in Lebanon responded to requests for comment from Reuters.Ī senior judicial source said Lebanon’s judiciary was unable to deliver the summons to attend the Paris hearing as it was addressed to Salameh at the Central Bank and he was unavailable to receive it.Īnother judicial source said the defense attorneys for the Salamehs and for the central bank chief’s assistant Marianne Hoayek had submitted an objection to Lebanon’s judiciary over the French case, saying France should not be allowed to try a case already being investigated in Lebanon. Two sources with knowledge of his travel plans said on Tuesday that Salameh had remained in Beirut. French prosecutors intend to press the preliminary charges and formally name him a suspect during that hearing. on May 16, according to court documents seen by Reuters. Riad Salameh, alongside his brother and an assistant, are being investigated in Lebanon and at least five European countries for allegedly taking hundreds of millions of dollars from the central bank to the detriment of the state.įrench prosecutors had set a hearing for him at 9:30 a.m. BEIRUT: Lebanon’s central bank chief did not attend a hearing in Paris on Tuesday where French prosecutors were expected to press preliminary fraud and money laundering charges against him, according to two sources with knowledge of his travel plans.
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