Some Hungarian lawmakers have raised doubts about whether to support the NATO membership applications by Sweden and Finland, citing what they call “blatant lies” from Stockholm and Helsinki on the state of Hungary’s democracy.

But the Hungarian delegation indicated Tuesday that the parliament in Budapest would ultimately ratify Sweden’s NATO bid.

“We support Sweden’s NATO membership,” Hungary’s deputy parliamentary speaker, Csaba Hende, told Swedish news agency TT.

“We made it clear that the Hungarian government, the Hungarian president, the prime minister and most of the Hungarian parliamentarians clearly support Swedish NATO membership,” Hende said, according to the news agency.

In Brussels, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed the statements by the Hungarian lawmakers.

“They are sending a positive message and recommending ratification. So, of course, we still have some way to go but we are making progress,” Stoltenberg told reporters.

The parliamentary delegation also met with Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström, who said that “we assume the ratification will take place shortly.”

“The date that has been talked about is the end of March, and that is what we are aiming for,” Billström told TT.

Hungary is the only NATO member country besides Turkey that hasn’t yet approved Sweden and Finland’s joint application to join the Western military alliance. The northern European neighbors sought NATO membership in May in response to Russia’s war in Ukraine, dropping their long-standing positions of military neutrality.

According to Aron Emilsson, chairman of the Swedish parliament’s committee on foreign affairs, who also met with the Hungarian delegation, the visiting lawmakers didn’t put forward any conditions for ratification.

“We talked about strengthening and improving bilateral relations and understanding each other’s constitutional traditions,” he said.

Hende said it was necessary to improve bilateral relations between Budapest and Stockholm. Hungarian officials have accused Swedish and Finnish politicians of telling “blatant lies” about Hungary.

“It would be appropriate that Swedish politicians, government representatives and members of the EU Parliament, based on completely untrue facts, do not indicate or imply that there is a lack of rule of law in a country,” Hende told TT.

The European Union has expressed repeated concerns about the state of democracy in Hungary under the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who earlier said it wasn’t right of Finland and Sweden “to ask us to take them on board while they’re spreading blatant lies about Hungary, about the rule of law in Hungary, about our democracy and about life here.”

The Hungarian delegation plans to visit neighboring Finland next to clarify its positions. The delegation’s trip to the two Nordic countries pushed a ratification vote back by two weeks. Hungary’s parliament now expects to take up the measure during a session that begins March 20.

EU defense ministers are holding an informal two-day meeting in Stockholm. Sweden currently holds the European Union’s rotating presidency.

NATO’s Stoltenberg was also in Stockholm and met with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and leaders of parliamentary parties that back the country’s bid to join the alliance.

On Thursday, Stoltenberg will chair a meeting in Brussels between representatives from Sweden, Finland and Turkey.

“I will be cautious about guessing what the outcome will be,” the former Norwegian prime minister told a press conference, adding: “It is important to meet.”

He reiterated that Sweden and Finland “have delivered on what they were supposed to do” after they applied to join the alliance in May.

Kristersson said the Swedish government will formally present later Tuesday a law enabling the Scandinavian country to join NATO. No date for a vote in the 349-seat Riksdag was announced.

“The Riksdag will make its decision in the NATO matter within a few weeks,” Kristersson said. “Sweden thus maintains exactly the same speed as Finland.”

On March 1, the Finnish parliament gave its approval to the NATO bid. Finnish President Sauli Niinisto has pledged to sign that into law before the Finland’s April 2 general election.

Justin Spike in Budapest, Hungary, and Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.

The Norwegian government will return the NH90 helicopters it has received so far and expects a full refund of the nearly 5 billion kroner (U.S. $525 million) it paid, according to Defence Minister Bjørn Arild Gram.

“Regrettably, we have reached the conclusion that no matter how many hours our technicians work, and how many parts we order, it will never make the NH90 capable of meeting the requirements of the Norwegian Armed Forces,” Arild Gram said.

The helicopter was developed in the mid-1990s by NHIndustries, a partnership between European companies Airbus Helicopters, Leonardo Helicopters and Fokker Technologies based in Aix-en-Provence, France. The aircraft is used by numerous countries.

Norway ordered 14 helicopters for coast guard and anti-submarine warfare duties in 2001, the Norwegian Armed Forces said. They were originally slated for delivery by the end of 2008, but only eight were delivered ready to operate.

“The fleet is currently required to provide 3,900 flight hours annually, but in recent years it has averaged only about 700 hours,” the Armed Forces said.

NHIndustries in a statement said it was “extremely disappointed by the decision taken by the Norwegian Ministry of Defense and refutes the allegations being made against the NH90 as well as against the company.”

It added that it had not been given an opportunity to discuss its latest proposals and that it considers the Norwegian termination of the contract as “legally groundless.”

The Norwegian Defence Ministry said it will shortly begin the process of identifying an alternative maritime helicopter.

The NH90 is twin-engine helicopter that was developed to meet NATO’s requirements for a modern, medium-sized, multirole military helicopter for both land and maritime operations.

A comprehensive review of the Norway’s maritime helicopter capabilities requested by the Defence Ministry in February concluded that even with significant additional financial investments, the performance and availability of the NH90 would not meet the country’s requirements.

Oslo-based KLP, which manages more than 300 billion kroner ($35.4 billion), said it made the decision after reviewing companies that may violate its guidelines on weapons.

“Those excluded are mainly companies that directly or indirectly contribute to the continuing existence of nuclear weapons,” said Kiran Aziz, KLP’s head of responsible investments. “Companies do not need to produce the actual weapons components themselves. It is sufficient that they contribute in other ways.”

The fund said in a statement that the weapons “by their nature violate fundamental humanitarian principles.”

As of this month, KLP won’t do business with companies including Britain’s Rolls Royce Holdings PLC, Massachusetts-based Raytheon Technologies Corp. and France’s Thales.

A U.N. treaty on eliminating nuclear weapons took effect in January, so investors like KLP must apply more stringent standards to companies that contribute to making those weapons, Aziz said.

KLP said Rolls Royce produces components for a number of vessels capable of launching nuclear weapons, Raytheon develops missiles that can carry nuclear warheads, and Thales develops and produces components for nuclear missiles.

In recent years, pension and wealth funds around the world have divested stocks, bonds or investment funds from companies that they have deemed unethical or morally ambiguous.

Earlier this year, KLP divested from 16 companies that operated in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. They appeared on a U.N. list of 112 companies that it said were complicit in violating the human rights of Palestinians by operating in the West Bank.

Last year, KLP excluded Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone because of its ties to Myanmar’s military, which staged a coup. It also previously cut investments in British security company G4S, saying the group was operating in countries such as Qatar and United Arab Emirates where there is a risk of violating international labor norms.

Thursday’s exclusions mean that KLP has sold shares worth just over 1 billion kroner ($117 million) and debt securities in the form of bonds worth around 200 million kroner ($23.5 million).

The ministry said that Norway’s Foreign Ministry earlier had raised the issue with Russian authorities.

In an email Tuesday to The Associated Press, the ministry said it “was aware that that jamming has been recorded between Oct. 16 and Nov. 7 from the Russian forces” on the Arctic Kola Peninsula.

NATO’s huge exercise Trident Juncture that included soldiers from 31 countries, was staged in Norway from Oct. 25 to Nov. 7. Finland and Sweden, which are not NATO members, also took part in the drill.

The jamming of the location signals is not believed to have caused any accidents.

Over the weekend, Finnish Prime Minister Juha Sipila said his country’s GPS location signals were intentionally disrupted in the northern Lapland region.

Finland’s state Air Navigation Services issued a warning to civilian air traffic earlier last week.

Without providing any further evidence, Sipila said Sunday that neighboring Russia may have been to blame.

“It’s possible Russia was the disrupting party,” Sipila said in an interview with Finnish public broadcaster YLE.

Finnish President Sauli Niinisto has called for a thorough investigation into the incident.

The Russian Defense Ministry could not be reached Tuesday for comment on Norway’s claim. The Kremlin on Monday denied involvement in the Finnish GPS disturbance.

“We know nothing about Russia’s possible involvement in those GPS failures,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said according to TASS news agency. “There is a trend to blame all mortal sins on Russia.”

Russia is known to have substantial capabilities for electronic warfare. Experts say it has in recent years invested heavily in technology that can affect GPS location signals over a broad area.

The northern Arctic regions of Finland’s Lapland and Norway’s Finnmark are adjacent to Russia’s Kola Peninsula, which is home to Russia’s Northern Fleet with major naval and submarine bases and other Russian military installations.

Asked about Finland’s claims, NATO’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters Monday that cyber and electronic warfare are becoming more and more widespread, “therefore we take all these issues very seriously.”

Olsen reported from Copenhagen, Denmark.

Russia, which shares a border with Norway, was briefed by NATO on the Trident Juncture 2018 drill and invited to monitor it, but Moscow is still angered by the exercise. Russia’s defense minister had warned that Moscow could be forced to respond to increased NATO activity close to its western border.

“NATO’s military activities near our borders have reached the highest level since the Cold War times,” Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Wednesday, noting that the war games will be “simulating offensive military action.”

The wargames bring together around 50,000 personnel from all 29 NATO allies, plus partners Finland and Sweden. Around 65 vessels, 150 aircraft and 10,000 vehicles will participate.

The drill scheduled to end Nov. 7 takes place in central and eastern Norway, the North Atlantic and the Baltic Sea.

Its aim is to ensure that NATO forces are trained, able to operate together, and ready to respond to any threat from any direction, according to the 29-member alliance.

In a joint op-ed published Thursday in Dagens Nyheter, one of Sweden’s largest newspapers, the Nordic defense and foreign ministers said they saw “no military threats against the Nordic countries today, but we live in an unpredictable and uncertain time.”

“Russia has both shown the will and ability to use military force to achieve strategic goals,” Sweden’s Peter Hultqvist wrote together with Frank Bakke-Jensen of Norway, Denmark’s Claus Hjort Frederiksen, Jussi Niinisto of Finland and Iceland’s foreign minister, Gudlaugur Thor Thordarson.

“Cyber-attacks and disinformation are actively used to create divisions between people in Europe as well as in the United States, which in turn challenges democratic institutions and our ability to reach common conclusions,” they said.

Tensions in the region have grown between Baltic NATO members and Moscow, including reports of airspace violations by Russian military aircraft. Non-aligned Sweden and Finland have watched with increasing trepidation, stepping up their own military activity with cross-border exercises and drills with NATO countries.

Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.

Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soreide said she has “no information” that any of Norway’s military exports have been used in Yemen, but that there’s “great concern” over the humanitarian crisis there.

The Emirati government offered no immediate comment on Norway’s decision.

The U.S.-backed coalition and an internationally recognized government have been at war with the rebels, known as Houthis, since March 2015. The coalition has made little progress amid a bloody stalemate, with the Iran-allied rebels still in firm control of the capital, Sanaa, and much of the north.

The fighting has killed more than 10,000 people, displaced 3 million and fueled a cholera epidemic in the Arab world’s poorest country.

On Tuesday, Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang published a video by the Yemeni rebels, known as Houthis, in which they claim to have seized “a U.S. spy submarine.”

The Norwegian newspaper said it was a REMUS 600 autonomous underwater vehicle made by Norway’s Kongsberg group. There was no comment from Kongsberg or from the Saudi-led coalition. It was also unclear when the sub was purportedly seized.

Eriksen Soreide said Norway has allowed the sale of weapons and ammunition to the UAE since 2010. The decision to suspend sales for so-called A-material — munitions and arms — was made Dec. 19 and announced on Wednesday.

Norwegian news agency NTB said Norway’s exports of weapons, munitions and other military equipment to the UAE were worth more than 100 million kroner (U.S. $12.3 million) in 2016.

Line Hegna, of Norway’s chapter of the international aid group Save the Children, said the decision was “important and the right thing to do.”

“The decision taken by the Norwegian government can act as an example for other exporting nations to act responsibly in the face of repeated violations of international humanitarian law,” she said in a statement to The Associated Press.

Associated Press writers Hamza Hendawi in Cairo and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, UAE, contributed to this report.

About 20,000 people now work for the Swedish Armed Forces, 84 percent of them men and 16 percent women, according to the Armed Forces’ website. But the Armed Forces lack 1,000 active troops as well as 7,000 reservists, according to Sweden’s coalition government of Social Democrats and Greens.

Under the plan approved Thursday, at least 4,000 18-year-olds could be called up each year. Enrolment should be made possible from July 1, and basic military training with compulsory service from Jan. 1. Swedes will still be able to volunteer for military service.

Sweden expects eventually that 13,000 young people will be called upon and 4,000 will be enrolled.

Gen. Micael Byden, the supreme commander of the Swedish Armed Forces, has called for a 15 percent budget boost to increase the country’s military’s capabilities in the coming years.

Photo Credit: Antti Aimo-Koivisto/AFP via Getty Images

The Swedish government, which often has described itself as “feminist,” said “modern conscription is gender neutral and will include both women and men. “

Hultqvist said he had been inspired by neighboring Norway, which in 2013 introduced a law applying military conscription to both sexes. That made Norway the first NATO member to draft both men and women, joining a tiny group of countries around the world, including Israel.

Conscription was introduced in Sweden in 1901 but had gradually winded down and was formally canceled 109 years later. During the Cold War era, nearly 85 percent of Swedish men were drafted into the Army due to the nearby threat of the Soviet Union. The average term of service was about 11 months.

In 2015, Sweden’s military expenditure dropped to 1.1 percent of its gross domestic product, down from 2.5 percent in 1991 as the Cold War came to an end, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

On Tuesday, Gen. Micael Byden, head of Sweden’s Armed Forces, said an additional 6.5 billion krona (U.S. $718.3 million), or a 15 percent budget boost, was needed to increase the country’s military’s capabilities in the coming years. This was to be added to the 45 billion krona the government had earmarked for 2017.