Tripartite defense meeting not forming new alliance: FM

Foreign Minister Timo Soini said on Thursday that the new system of tripartite meetings gathering Finnish, U.S. and Swedish defense ministers is not a start of new defense policy structure or alliance.

Soini made the remarks when talking to foreign media representatives in Helsinki.

The ministerial level tripartite meetings were agreed during the recent visit to Finland by U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis.

Soini said both Finland and Sweden are militarily non-aligned countries, and thus cooperation in defense is important. He noted Finland and Sweden are in agreement for widening their cooperation in defense "without a limit".

Meanwhile, he also mentioned the increased divergence in the support of the two countries for joining NATO.

This week a poll commissioned by the think tank Frivarld in Sweden showed an increase from 37 to 44 percent in NATO membership backing, while the majority of Swedes still remain opposed.

In Finland, a poll by official defense information body, MTS, released this week showed NATO support had declined from 25 percent to 22 percent within a year. In 2014, it had been at 30 percent.

Soini also talked about his current visits to Finnish schools to warn against radicalism. He underlined his lecturers were intended to discourage all variants of radicalism, both left and right.