A rebuke from the Empire
Her Excellency the Imperial Chancellor of the Outer Territories raps an errant provincial government on the fingers (NTB/Aftenposten):
The reaction was reportedly given to the Norwegian embassy in Washington DC, and it was made clear that the statements came from the top level of the US State Department, newspaper VG reports.
VG claims that two classified reports promised a “tougher climate” between the USA and Norway if Halvorsen’s remarks represented the foreign policy of the new red-green alliance of the Labor, Socialist Left and Center parties.
Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jonas Gahr Støre, responded immediately with written explanations to both Israel and the USA, clarifying the government’s stance, while Halvorsen distanced her party’s policy from that of the government’s.
“Serious political consequences” is just about the harshest diplomatic phrase there is, short of threatening war. As far as I recall, the US has never openly addressed Israel this way, nor the likes of Russia and China. Needless to say, no European country made such threats against the US over Guantánamo, prisoner flights, Fallujah, Abu Ghraib, or even the Iraq war itself.
One wonders what the “consequences” might have come down to. Trade sanctions? Expulsion from NATO? Moving the US embassy to an even more attractive outdoors area?
The latter, I think, we should offer on our own account. Only the finest location suffices for where Norway’s foreign policy is fixed.
