Archives

STOCKHOLM, Thursday (Reuters) The death of Anna Lindh triggered a wave of grief and incredulity across Sweden on Thursday and world leaders paid tribute to the murdered foreign minister.

"Sweden has lost its face towards the world," Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson said.

At the entrance of the Karolinska hospital where the 46-year-old mother of two died at 5.29 a.m., the Swedish flag flew at half mast.

Visitors wept and placed roses, the symbol of Lindh's Social Democrat Party, by the flagpole. A tribute from youth groups of political parties read: "We think about you, Anna Lindh."

Lindh's stabbing in a department store evoked dark memories of the killing of Prime Minister Olof Palme in a city centre street in 1986. For many, that assassination dispelled an illusion that the country was immune from political violence.

"The grief, anger and despair the murder of Anna Lindh evokes is indescribable," said Christian Democrats leader Alf Svensson. "What should not happen has happened once again."

Centre Party leader Maud Olofsson said:

"The deed reminds us of our open society's vulnerability. I hope we can rise from the tragedy in a common and powerful defence for openness."

World leaders also paid tribute to Lindh, who had been a leading campaigner for her country to vote "Yes" to joining the European Union's single currency in a referendum on Sunday.

"The beauty that she had in her face was a representation of the beauty she had in her soul," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said at a news conference in Brussels. In Geneva, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan called Lindh a "great foreign minister, a great Swede and a great European".

In London, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said she was "someone full of life who represented something wonderful in Sweden and Europe".

Tributes from her counterparts around the world poured in, including France's Dominique de Villepin, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and Russia's Igor Ivanov.

Romano Prodi, President of the European Commission, said he was filled with dismay at news of the "blind attack" on Lindh, while European parliament president Pat Cox said Lindh was "the exemplary face of European politics".

"The world on the 11th of September, with horrible irony, has lost another very substantial contributor to a better and safer world," NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said during a visit to Denmark.

EU ambassadors held a minute's silence during a session in Brussels, while in the southern Swedish town of Barseback it was announced that competitors would wear black armbands at golf's Solheim Cup - the world's top team competition for women. Ordinary Swedes, meanwhile, laid flowers outside the NK store in central Stockholm, where Lindh was stabbed by an unidentified man on Wednesday afternoon, and outside the main government offices.

Officials said funeral arrangements had yet to be discussed..

www.crescat.com

News | Business | Features | Editorial | Security
Politics | World | Letters | Sports | Obituaries

Produced by Lake House
Copyright © 2003 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
Comments and suggestions to :Web Manager