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Finns increasingly unsure about NATO membership

Xinhua, February 16, 2017 Adjust font size:

A survey published on Wednesday showed that Finns have been increasingly uncertain about whether or not their country should join NATO, the U.S.-led military alliance.

About 28 percent of respondents could not say if they supported Finland's NATO membership or not, according to a poll commissioned by the Finnish national broadcaster Yle and carried out by Taloustutkimus, a market research company.

The share of the uncertainty over the membership has been rising steadily over the past few years. The figure was 16 percent in 2014 and 23 percent in 2015.

Matti Pesu, a researcher from the University of Tampere, told Yle that the new U.S. president's position on NATO could partly explain the reason behind the increase.

During the election campaign, Donald Trump said, among other things, that the defense of other member states may be waived if countries failed to fulfill their obligations.

What Trump said about NATO in his speeches has aroused speculations about the alliance, said Pesu, adding that media reports about the issue would certainly exert an influence on people's thinking.

The survey manifested that the support for Finland's membership of NATO remained at 21 percent, while 51 percent of respondents said they opposed joining the military alliance.

In the past 25 years when NATO membership has been discussed in Finland, the supporting rate had been at a very low level.

The Swedish viewpoint on NATO also affect Finns. Some 38 percent of Finnish respondents said that Finland should join the military alliance if Sweden did, while 44 percent of them were against the membership, even if their western neighbor joined.

Teemu Hakkinen, a researcher from the University of Jyvaskyla, told Yle that it would change the situation in the Baltic Sea area if Sweden joined NATO.

According to the poll, a clear majority -- 60 percent of Finns -- believed that a referendum would be the best way to decide Finland's NATO membership.

The survey was conducted at the beginning of February 2017. More than 1,000 people participated. Endit