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Chemical Ollie
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Bored of this board
Jan 2002
time: 06:30
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Hey, it's even on FOX:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,97028,00.html
quote:
STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh (search), touted as a future prime minister, died Thursday from stab wounds, the second Swedish politician to be murdered in the Scandinavian country in 17 years in a rare act of violence.
Lindh died at 5:29 a.m. after 10 hours of surgery for severe internal bleeding and wounds to her stomach and liver after she was knifed in an upscale Stockholm department store by an unknown assailant.
Police didn't believe the attack was politically motivated, despite the fact it came just three days before Swedes were to vote in a referendum on adopting the euro. Lindh was a leading campaigner for replacing the Swedish krona with the common currency — an issue that had inspired vehement opposition.
In the wake of her death all campaigning for the referendum was canceled, Prime Minister Goeran Persson said, but the vote would go ahead as scheduled on Sunday.
"We want to encourage everyone to vote on Sunday," he said, adding that government leaders had considered postponing the referendum for a month, or even a year.
Lindh's death cast a pall across the Scandinavian country of 9 million, whose residents have always enjoyed easy access to their leaders. Lindh, like slain Prime Minister Olof Palme, had no bodyguards. Only Persson and King Carl XVI Gustaf have permanent security details.
Choking on his words as he announced Lindh's death, Persson said the country's tradition of openness was forever damaged by the killing.
"The attack against her also hurt the society we've built up and in which we want to live in," he said.
The Swedish security agency, known as SAPO, conceded that security could have been better around Lindh, but stopped short of accepting blame for the incident.
"There was no threat picture against Anna Lindh and that's why she didn't have any body guard protection," acting SAPO chief Kurt Malmstroem told Swedish radio. "It is of course a failure in that this has happened. The future will have to show whether there has been an erroneous judgment."
But some criticized the agency, noting emotions were running high in the country because of the referendum.
"To put it mildly, how the hell can you say that there wasn't a threatening picture in a politically inflamed situation?" said Jerzy Sarnecki, a Stockholm University criminology professor.
The attack sent a chill through Sweden and neighboring Nordic countries, where government officials called it a threat to the kind of open and mild-mannered societies they've tried to nurture.
"Our country is known for its openness, known to be a democratic society and the closeness is and should be great between people and elected officials," Persson said. He called Sweden "a tolerant society, unique in its context, and Anna Lindh was a good representative of all that."
Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen called it "a major setback and shock" to the region's culture of openness.
In Sweden's Riksdag, or parliament, lawmakers held a moment of silence, while Swedish flags flew at half-staff across the country. Churches were to be kept open in many parts of the country and a memorial service was scheduled Thursday night in the 15th century cathedral in Uppsala, just north of Stockholm.
Agneta Blidberg, the lead police investigator, said every resource was being used to track down the attacker, who was last seen fleeing the store. Borders with Norway, Finland and Denmark were being monitored closely and ferry traffic between Sweden and the Baltic states also was being watched.
"We are using all the means at our disposal," she told The Associated Press, but added no arrests had been made.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, speaking in Geneva, said he "was shocked and deeply saddened" by the news of Lindh's death.
"Sweden has lost a successful and a great foreign minister, a great Swede and a great European. I have also lost a close friend and so has the United Nations," said Annan, whose wife, Nane, is Swedish.
Lawmakers in Germany's lower house of parliament fell silent as Parliament President Wolfgang Thierse interrupted a budget debate Thursday with news of Lindh's death.
"I can only express our revulsion at this deed," Thierse said. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw called her death a "terrible tragedy."
"Anna was a good friend of mine," Straw said. "She had this extraordinary ability to balance the demands of one of the most active of Europe's foreign ministers in her role as one of Sweden's leading politicians and that of someone who was completely committed to her family."
Lindh was head of the Foreign Ministry since 1998, serving as environmental minister before that. She was a member of the Riksdag, or parliament, from 1982-1985. She is married and has two children.
Scandinavia is relatively immune to political violence, unlike other parts of Europe. Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic was assassinated in March by allies of Slobodan Milosevic seeking to topple his pro-Western government as he was heading to a meeting with Lindh. In the Netherlands, anti-immigration politician Pim Fortuyn was shot to death by an animal rights activist in May 2002.
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Monk
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I don't think we're in Brønshøj anymore
Jan 1970
time: 06:30
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As for the euro vote, I'd have to bet my money on a yes by 52/48 or so as they're going to get sympathy votes in the same way as Palme and Fortuyn.
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11-09-2003 15:39
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