There is a new government in Stockholm: what is Sweden's new foreign policy going to be like and who is going to represent it?According to an unscientific internet poll in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter, the public favourite for the post of foreign minister is Cecilia Malmstrom, the young liberal MEP, who is praised in a recent editorial for "knowing everything about the EU and Russia" and who would bring "fresh oxygen into the palace" where the "social democrat heriditary aristocracy" have been sitting for too long. Another Brussels personality who has been tipped for the post is the very tall and photogenic Anders Wijkman, a Christian democrat who knows a lot about green issues. Lena Ek, another liberal, could also be brought home. Talks are ongoiung and silence has descended over government offices at Rosenbad this week; the decisions will be revealed on October 6. Of other possible candidates, Carl Bildt, the right's last prime minister - 12 years ago - and noted international statesman - has said he wouldn't want the job and the right's senior Swedish MEP, Gunnar Hokmark, is unlikley to have to pack his bags for a new life in Stockholm. IN his revealing, recently published biography Reinfeldt admtted that Hokmark, who once ran a rightwing think tank, had "plagued the life out of the party" in the 1990s. Hokmark is not very popular with the Swedish media either, which lamented his unmemorable appearances on Swedish television during the last euro elections. "Can anyone remember what he said?" commentd one. ANother commentator wrote about Hokmark's links to an outfit called the European Enterprise institute, a carbon copy of the US neo conservative think tanks, which agitates against the EU's environment policies and workers' rights; and one of whose lobbyists was described by the Independenty last year as "itman for Exxon Mobil." What of policies? Sweden will continue its engagement in traditional issues such as human rights, free trade and enlargement. But there will be some differences too. There will be less worship of the UN, less uncritical flirtation with the third world, where a more critical democracy perspective will take place. Reinfeldt, the new prime minister, has said he will not immediately ratify the constitution. EU policy is an interesting white space at the moment; but Reinfeldt's party, the moderates, are much more Euroscpetic than they used to be.Then there is the Middle East. If Sweden will be bereft of the services of the chairman of the Sweden-Israeli friendship association, as Hokmark is, it is still likely to take a more Israel friendly line. Government officials in Jersulam were reportedly dancing jigs of joy when the most pro Palestian government in Europe lost the Swedish elections on September 17. Sweden broke ranks with the EU in May by awarding a Hamas minister a visa, and public hostility betweeen Israel and Sweden under the social democrats go back a long way: in April Sweden dropped out of militray exercises where Israel was present, with ex prime minister Persson lamenting "Israel's history of violence." Anna Lindh, the Swedish foreign minister a few years ago, once said "Israel is a democracy balacing on a thin line." A low point in a bad relationship came in 2004 when, at a display of modern art in Stockholm, the Israeli ambassador wrecked an exhibit that appeared to glorify a suicide bomber in front of TV cameras - a story which made worldwide headlines.Afterwards he criticised Sweden as a country where "people are afraid of Arabs but against Jews they can do what they want," adding that"Jews are hassled by Muslims everywhere - on the tube, in schools, in the street."Swedish commentators retorted that the action, coming from a diplomat with forty years experience, was planned in advance and with the full approval of the Sharon government to distract attention to a Swedish conference on genocide, and ramping up the hostile relationship between Israel and Europe was imperative to prevemnt Europeans from any influence whatseoever in the Middle East, which would remain a US-Israeli fiefdom. These outbreaks of hostility could now be a thing of the past. Though some commentators worry that sections of the Swedish christian demnocrats and liberals, two government parties, are "so pro Israeli it seems that Christian Zionists have been acting as their prompters", singling out the youth associations. A writer on the liberal Expressen out it: "I don't quite trust the new government; there is a worrying amount of bonkers thinking in the political right in Sweden on foreign policy. The youth associations seemed to have turned into neoconservative sects who pray to Bush and bombs with the same ideological fervour. She added: "Can we be sure that today's tired and lie-infested foreign policy is not replaced bysupport for everything the US does and throws the hope of a just peace in the Middle East overboard?"Maybe not as much as that. But relations with US, as with Israel, are bound to become closer than the days when the US withdrew its ambassador to Sweden and Stockholm was a refuge for every liberation movement in the developing world
