jim@haring.UUCP (09/06/84)
> ............................The latest is 1984, preparations for the > invasion of neutral Sweden by reconaissance of defenses by submarines > and covert landing parties. The latter was reported by the L.A. Times > last week, quoting from one of "Jane's...of the World" books, that it > has been going on since 1962......................................... From what I remember in the papers here, no one gave any credence to these totally unsupported allegations, including the Swedish government, who said that such actions would constitute a declaration of war. "Hallo Sweden. Are you still there? Can you confirm/deny this?" Jim McKie Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica, Amsterdam mcvax!jim
alf@ttds.UUCP (Thomas Sj|land) (09/08/84)
The Swedish Department of Defense could not confirm the statements made by
Jane's that Soviet special marines, the so called "Spetznaz" troops have
been using Swedish islands in the outer Archipelago as training area on at
least 150 occasions the last 20 years.
Fact of the matter as it looks to someone who does not have access to top
secret material is that the media have reported a number of incidents where
mystic unidentified frogmen have been seen by observers in the archipelago
area. On several occasions the last two to three years the Swedish marine
has tried to trap "unidentified underwater activity" as the term goes but
have so far failed to force the submarines to surface. Shooting at
"fleeing frogmen" with sharp ammunition on land (!) has occurred in
Karlskrona this spring, unfortunately (?) without success. On one occasion
just outside of Stockholm close to one of Sweden's most modern marine base
at H}rsfj{rden the identification evidence in the form of radar-echoes and
video-films of traces from mini-submarines under water were considered so
clear that the government issued a formal protest to the Soviet authorities
and also cut down diplomatic activities for a period of approximately one
year. The Soviet's official answer was to deny completely and blame the
Swedish military and media for cooperating with NATO in an international
'anti-Soviet campaign'. The Soviet GRU-officer Michail Milstein answered
through 'secret channels' to the Swedish government in a message that
leaked to the media from the foreign ministry that the Soviet's would never
admit anything like this, no matter how clear the evidence were. The
government has given submarine hunting equipment including new electronic
outfits and better armed costal corvettes and helicopters highest priority.
The standing order to the armed forces has been changed from the former one
of using any means to force the foreign submarines to the surface to a
stronger version stated by prime minister Palme of using any means to fight
these intruders including "shooting to kill" which is normally only used
under warlike conditions. Some observers have though doubted that this is
the actual order and the diplomatic activities of the government lately
have given evidence that they do not want to have an intensified diplomatic
conflict with the much stronger russians. It is clear however that the
reported events are putting Palme in a very difficult situation since he
wants Sweden to act as some sort of international "Peace mediator". Having
a direct conflict with the russians certainly makes these ambitions very
much more difficult to fulfill.
So far the government has not commented the official Soviet attempts to
quiet the Swedish media by asking for government actions to stop 'anti-
soviet' articles in the press (expressed in an article by the official
TASS-commentator Alexander Bovin in liberal 'Dagens Nyheter' this spring),
a fact that worries at least the commentators in the conservative 'Svenska
Dagbladet'. Though nobody actually beleives that the government would
succeed in trying to impose a 'finnish' attitude on the press it is clear
that the Department of Foreign Affairs uses its possibility of making
sensitive documents 'top secret' ever so often, something which has been
critizised by several liberal and conservative commentators as well as by
the chinese oriented communists. The latest incident with the Suchoi-15
hunting a civil aircraft over swedish territory was such an event that a
leakage at the department let out to the press. Evidently the social
democrat government wants to speak to the russians without having the media
interfering for reasons unknown to an ignorant observer of the people.alan@sdcrdcf.UUCP (09/10/84)
> >> ............................The latest is 1984, preparations for the >> invasion of neutral Sweden by reconaissance of defenses by submarines >> and covert landing parties. The latter was reported by the L.A. Times >> last week, quoting from one of "Jane's...of the World" books, that it >> has been going on since 1962......................................... > >From what I remember in the papers here, no one gave any credence to these >totally unsupported allegations, including the Swedish government, who said >that such actions would constitute a declaration of war. > I don't know which allegations you consider to be totally unsupported, but considering the # of times Sweden has gone sub-fishing recently, I suspect you mean the part about landing parties. I can neither confirm nor deny your stmt "no one..." about landing parties, since the only time i heard about it was in that one article. But i DO know that the "Jane's...of the World" books are widely regarded and considered authoratative. We 'out-of-the-know'-people have to balance that against people who don't give the stmts credence. As for the Swedish govn saying what you said it said, last week i had the opportunity to talk to a Swedish film director (in USA for 1 year) about Sweden's policies toward the Soviets. Hw said, in so many words, that Sweden was quite Finland-ized. He said that the Swedes don't like the Soviets, but what is the govn to do? Due to geographic considerations the USSR exerts great influence on Sweden, and it must be careful not to ruffle the Soviet's feathers too much. [he also said he was firmly convinced that Central American nations are in the same boat vis-a-vis the USA, but that's another story...] He told me that [he believed] Sweden knows darn well that those subs are from the USSR, and knows more details about them and their incursions they they admit. He said that Sweden could easily blow one out of the water, but it dares not to. For what it's worth... sdcrdcf!alan P.S. greg@unc - it will be a little longer yet before i can respond to your response to my response to Hawkins response.