Foreign Minister Of Sweden Resigns Over Cartoons
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The foreign minister of Sweden, Laila Freivalds, 63, resigned yesterday after it was disclosed that she had encouraged the closing of a Web site run by the Sweden Democrats Party, which published cartoons of the prophet Mohammad.
At first Ms. Freivalds denied having authorized a Foreign Ministry official to contact Levonline, which hosted the Sweden Democrats’ site. The official was sharply criticized by Sweden’s prime minister, Goran Persson, who said that however strongly the official felt about the cartoons issue, he was wrong to have taken part in censorship.
When it emerged that Ms. Freivalds had, despite her denials, been consulted before the Web site was shut down, she was hounded by the press. “I held a press conference in Brussels on the election in Belarus and none of the journalists were interested in that issue,” she said. “That was when I realized this is impossible,” she said, shortly before resigning.
