Croatian President Zoran Milanovic said Wednesday that he intends to order Ambassador Mario Nobilo, the country’s permanent envoy to NATO, to prevent Finland and Sweden from joining the decades-old military alliance.

Milanovic told reporters that refusing consent would draw attention away from the challenges confronting ethnic Croats in neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina. Croat legislators tend to be elected with the votes of Bosnian Muslims, often known as Bosniaks, under existing election regulations. Zagreb is going forward.

“I have said before, Croats in Bosnia are more important to me than the entire Russian-Finnish border,” Milanovic said.

On May 15, Stockholm and Helsinki formally ended their period of neutrality by applying for NATO membership. Acceptance of additional nations into the bloc, however, needs unanimous approval from all members.

Ankara’s opposition to any agreement admitting Sweden and Finland to NATO until they denounce “terrorists and their accomplices” associated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front (DHKP/C), among other concessions, was “showing how to fight for national interests,” Milanovic said.

“Turkey will certainly not budge before it gets what it wants,” the Croat president said.

Milanovic’s newest remarks have strained his already strained relationship with Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic’s cabinet, which he has accused of failing to represent Croatian interests, according to local news site N1.

On Wednesday, Croatian Foreign Minister Gordan Grlic-Radman informed state radio that Nobilo has already been warned “to approve Finland and Sweden’s membership application” and “will be given power of attorney to sign a protocol that will follow in the next few days.”

Croatia’s parliament is “certain” to ratify the agreement, Grlic-Radman added.