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Trouble in Europe's
''
UIET
ca
E~'
by
Gene H. Hogberg
Mysterious objects prowl in Sweden's coast al waters. A spy scandal
shakes Norway. NATO's clouded future threatens to upset
the sensitive "Nordic balance" and the region's future security.
T
HE
NORDIC world–
made up of Norway,
Sweden, Denmark,
F inland and Iceland- com–
prises what has often been
called the "quiet comer" of
Europe.
This comer, however, is very
much in the news these days–
and for good reason.
Earlier this year , the Swedish
armed submarine the U-137 ran
aground in the same general area.
This time, however, "frogmen–
like persons," according to the
Swedish government, set foot on
the island of Almoe and were driv–
en off by the Swedish army using
machine guns and hand grenades.
The action marked the first time
since the Russo-Swedish war of
1809 that live ammunition was
fired at foreign soldiers encroach–
ing on Swedish soil.
Hundreds of Secret
Probings
The latest incident brought
to a head a decade of
almost continua! foreign
submarine infringements
in Swedish terr i torial
waters, with, according to
Britain's
Daily Telegraph,
"well over 300 reports,
sightings and confirmed
episodes in the past three
years."
The U-137, a SoYiet nuclear-armed submarine, ran
aground off Karlskrona, Sweden, in October 1981.
An official Swedish mil–
itary report summarized
the government 's growing
concern: "The relatively.
harmless intrusions of out–
navy trapped a suspected foreign
submarine near it s top-secret
Karlskrona naval base. The inci–
dent recalled the time in October
1981 when the Soviet nuclear-
2
er territorial waters of the 1960s have
now been taken over by deep penetra–
tion of our inner coastal waters and
often in areas of vital importance for
our general defense."
Particularly disturbing was a
Swedish parliamentary report that
described how X-ray tracings had
shown " manned midget submarines
with a bottom crawling capacity"
had, in September 1982, crept
along the bottom of a waterway
that leads right through the middle
of Stockholm, the capital. One
minisub audaciously crawled to
within a mile of King Carl XVI
Gustars palace!
The intruding submarines are
widely believed to be mapping the
entrances to military bases along
the coastline of neutral Sweden for
use in the event of a generalized
war in Europe. They are also pre–
sumed to be seeking potential hid–
ing places.
Scandal Rocks Norway
ln neighboring Norway, the big
story has been not so much
unwanted submarines- though
they are frequently spotted inside
the country's many deep fjords–
but a spy scandal, the consequences
of which could be far-reaching.
Last January, Arne Treholt,
Chief of Information at the Norwe–
gian Foreign Ministry, was arrested
just as he was attempting to leave
Oslo's Fornebu Airport, his brief–
case full of classified documents.
He admitted to Norwegian security
police that he had intended to fly to
The
PLAIN TRUTH