Recently, there has been a lot of talk about the common NATO future of the Nordic countries. In Oslo, however, there was a clear rift in the line of the five, writes Nordic correspondent Pirjo Auvinen.
Pirjo Auvinen, Nordic correspondent
Key ministers of the Nordic countries and members of parliament interested in the Nordics meet annually, this time in Oslo.
In advance, the meeting was characterized by the themes of safety, green transition and young people. They were certainly talked about, but the main attention was taken by the previous Saturday’s UN resolution vote on Israel, Gaza and Hamas.
In the vote, the five Nordic countries broke up. Norway voted in favor of the resolution along with 120 other UN member states. The other Nordic countries abstained from voting, as did Germany, Italy and Britain, for example.
Finland’s line becomes clearest when the prime minister listens Petteri Orpon and the Prime Minister of Norway Jonas Gahr Støren justifications.
According to Orpo, Finland could not support the resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, because the text did not condemn the terrorist organization Hamas’s attack on Israel by name. Orpo would also refer to the EU’s line, even though there were three different ones in the UN vote.
Norway’s prime minister felt it was necessary to vote for the declaration’s cease-fire if he cared at all about Gaza’s civilians. It would be inconsistent for him to be concerned about civilians in Ukraine but not Gaza.
Why empty?
The reasons for Finland’s line were busily speculated in the corridors of Norway’s parliament building, i.e. the Stortinget. According to one explanation, Finland just blindly followed Germany’s example. Another guess was that sympathy for Israel is a requirement of the Christian Democrats sitting in the government. The third explanation offered was that Norway has a Democrat-led government, while Sweden and Finland have right-wing governments.
The fourth doubt was whether the voting line was discussed at all in the government’s foreign policy committee, let alone in the joint meeting of the president and the committee.
But the abstention must have caused some kind of pain in the governments of both Finland and Sweden.
Foreign minister Elina Valtonen (co.) published a long message on Wednesday evening, in which he urged the UN Security Council to “know its responsibility according to the UN Charter and to adopt a resolution on the situation as soon as possible. The already catastrophic situation in Gaza keeps getting worse”.
On Thursday morning, the Swedish government published the writing, according to which Israel’s right to self-defense is not absolute, but must comply with the rules of international law. According to the Swedish government, Israel must also strive to avoid civilian casualties.