Peace Prize nominations decline

Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee have started huddling at the Nobel Institute in Oslo once again, to deliberate over who will win the Nobel Peace Prize this year. The number of nominations for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize has declined slightly for the first time in several years. Among the nominees are, as usual, [...]

Russia: US will send ships to Norway

A Russian diplomat has claimed that American authorities are hoping to place warships in Norwegian waters as part of the planned NATO missile defense system. The Russian ambassador to NATO, Dmitrij Rogozin, told news agency NTB that “when I talked with my American colleagues, they did not rule out the possibility of placing missile defense [...]

Ambassador breaks WikiLeaks silence

US Ambassador Barry White has been complaining about Oslo-based newspaper Aftenposten for months and finally went public with his criticism of Norway’s largest daily on Monday, in Aftenposten itself. He thinks the paper’s use of WikiLeaks documents is inappropriate. White has been unhappy over coverage in Aftenposten and a vast array of other Norwegian media [...]

Norway joined NATO in suppressing reports of civilian Afghan deaths

New WikiLeaks releases, accessed by Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, continue to embarrass the Norwegian government as well as the US’, with latest revelations suggesting that Norway’s ambassadors joined their US-led NATO allies in attempts to avoid a messy debate on civilian casualties in Afghanistan. Leaked cables from the American delegation to NATO, written in September 2008, [...]

Norway among those splitting NATO

New WikiLeaks releases have revealed the depth of divisions in NATO over key questions of European security – with the Norwegian government accused of being part of an allegedly pro-Russian “gang of five” with France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. American diplomatic cables between 2006 and 2010, handed over to WikiLeaks and which Norwegian newspapers [...]

WikiLeaks snares Nobel nomination

UPDATED: A member of the Norwegian Parliament (Stortinget) has nominated the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize – a suggestion that quickly drew controversy as the prize itself often does. A Cuban dissident also won a Nobel nod. Snorre Valen, a representative of the Socialist Left Party (Sosialistisk venstreparti, SV), highlighted WikiLeaks’ [...]

WikiLeaks: Norway talked to Taliban

New WikiLeaks documents made available to Oslo newspaper Aftenposten suggest that Norwegian officials took the initiative to open negotiations with the Taliban in Afghanistan last year. Norway denies the contact, reports of which come just a week after other reports revealed previously unknown contact between Norway and Hamas. Diplomatic cables from February 7, 2010 reveal [...]

Støre makes the rounds in Mideast

Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre flew right into a hornets’ nest of new tensions in the Middle East this week, as he made the rounds of visits to leaders in Israel, Jordan and Mokatah, the government complex for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The fall of the government in Lebanon, though, throws the entire area into [...]

‘Russian corruption’ worried Statoil

Norwegian state oil company Statoil is so worried about rising signs of corruption in Russia, according to US documents given to WikiLeaks, that it may cause problems for Statoil’s involvement in Russia’s giant Stockman gas field in the Barents Sea. Meanwhile, there are more signs of conflict between WikiLeaks and Oslo media outlet Aftenposten, which gained [...]

Norway pressed into missile defense

The US put heavy pressure on the Norwegian government to go along with a missile defense program and apparently won support before the government made its compliance public. New disclosures from WikiLeaks documents, reported by Oslo newspaper Aftenposten, also reveal Israel’s goal to keep Gaza on the verge of economic collapse. As Aftenposten continues to [...]

WikiLeaks has turned into a torrent

Oslo newspaper Aftenposten continues to churn out stories related to the content of more than 250,000 diplomatic cables that the US had intended to keep secret. Among the topics: Sri Lankan dealings with Iran, alleged French espionage and German-US spy satellites, and Israel’s plans for war. Here follows a summary of revelations emerging recently from [...]

Chinese relations in deep freeze

Norway’s relations with China were chilly even before the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded last year’s Peace Prize to a Chinese human rights activist. More WikiLeaks documents reveal strains in 2009 and earlier, and there’s also international alarm over a Chinese space project that has destroyed satellites. Now relations between China and Norway seem frozen. The [...]

Editor expounds on WikiLeaks access

The editor of Oslo-based newspaper Aftenposten was fending off reaction Tuesday to a commentary she wrote on her paper’s access to all of the more than 250,000 diplomatic cables initially leaked to the non-profit organization WikiLeaks. She had called it a “paradox” that WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange reportedly is angry that Aftenposten now can report [...]

Banks aren’t opposing WikiLeaks blockade

Norwegian bank officials seem to be looking the other way as their co-owned credit card company effectively blocks donations to whistle-blowing organization WikiLeaks on behalf of Visa Europe. Newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) reports that the banks, including DnB NOR and SR-Bank, earned handsome profits when their payment firm BBS and credit card company Teller merged [...]

Fighter jet price seems to soar

UPDATED: The Norwegian government’s controversial but arguably predictable decision to buy new fighter jets from its most important ally, the US, has been hit with another major cost issue. Documents leaked to WikiLeaks and reported in newspaper Aftenposten indicate the price tag has jumped by 66 percent and may cost Norwegian taxpayers another NOK 12 [...]

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