Finland has announced that it will be closing down its embassies in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Myanmar, citing \u201coperational and strategic reasons,\u201d it emerged on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ministry for foreign affairs has decided to close the embassies of Finland in Islamabad, Kabul and Yangon in 2026,\u201d said the Finnish foreign minister in a press release issued on Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe embassies will be closed for operational and strategic reasons, which are linked to changes in the countries\u2019 political situation and their limited commercial and economic relations with Finland,\u201d the statement added.<\/p>\n
\u201cDecisions on closures are made by a decree of the President of the Republic,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
The ministry stated that preparations to close the embassies in the three countries have \u201calready started\u201d and added the missions would be closed during 2026.<\/p>\n
The move comes as part of Finland\u2019s \u201cstrategic review\u201d of its network of missions.<\/p>\n
It takes into account Finland\u2019s foreign and security policy interests and the needs of Finland\u2019s export promotion activities, the statement read.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe aim is to concentrate resources on countries that are strategically important to Finland,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will systematically develop Finland\u2019s network of missions abroad to meet future challenges,\u201d Finnish Minister for Foreign Affairs Elina Valtonen was quoted as saying.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur operating environment is changing rapidly. The changes to be made will help us to build a stronger and more competitive Finland and to manage Finland\u2019s external relations in accordance with our priorities,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The country had shut down its operations in Pakistan in 2012 as well, forced by budgetary constraints, but the mission was later reopened in 2022.<\/p>\n
In 2023, Sweden also indefinitely closed its embassy in the capital, citing the security situation as the reason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Finland has announced that it will be closing down its embassies in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Myanmar, citing \u201coperational and strategic reasons,\u201d it emerged on Saturday. \u201cThe ministry for foreign affairs has decided to close the embassies of Finland in Islamabad, Kabul and Yangon in 2026,\u201d said the Finnish foreign minister in a press release issued […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13729,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pakistan-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13728"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13730,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13728\/revisions\/13730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}