SWEDEN SCENESETTER FOR CODEL TANNER

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 STOCKHOLM 000309

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: OREP PGOV ECON SW
SUBJECT: SWEDEN SCENESETTER FOR CODEL TANNER

Introduction
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1. The U.S. Embassy in Stockholm warmly welcomes your visit
to Sweden, the first Congressional delegation to travel here
since Rep. Larson of Connecticut visited in September 2007.
The United States and Sweden share a strong and abiding
relationship built on a foundation of shared values, cultural
ties, trade and investment, and a commitment to resolving
global problems such as climate change. The Government of
Sweden places high importance on strengthening transatlantic
ties and cooperation, especially in the run up to its EU
Presidency (July-December 2009). As a small nation that has
sought for two centuries to avoid armed conflict, Sweden
believes its interests are best projected through
multilateral agreements in international institutions, and
thus focuses its foreign policy efforts within the frameworks
of the UN, the European Union (EU),and other multilateral
fora. At the same time, Sweden is a strong NATO partner,
with troops under NATO command in Kosovo and in Afghanistan
(where Sweden now has 400 troops and is deploying 100 more
later this year).


2. In your meetings with Members of Parliament and government
officials, we recommend that your main message focus on
thanking Sweden for its contributions in Afghanistan -- both
foreign assistance and military -- and urging them to do
more, including by leading EU efforts to staff fully the
EUPOL police mission.

Political and Economic Overview
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3. Prime Minister Reinfeldt leads a four-party, center-right
governing coalition that, in 2006, turned out the Social
Democrats who had governed Sweden for most of the 20th
century. Jockeying has already begun for the 2010
parliamentary elections, with the governing coalition
remaining strong in the polls. The public focus over the
next year will remain on the financial crisis and employment.
Most foreign policy issues, including NATO relations, are
not in the front of the voters' minds. The financial crisis
hit Swedish industry hard, and Swedish banks are suffering
from extensive credit exposure in the Baltic states and
Ukraine. Swedish Minister of Finance Anders Borg predicts
the unemployment rate will continue to rise until it hits
11.7 percent in 2011. Sweden will not stimulate the domestic
market, as it needs to retain a substantial safety margin in
the event the financial crisis deteriorates further. Right
now, the energies of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA)
are focused on the EU presidency.

EU Presidency Priorities
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4. Sweden is now finessing its policy goals for its EU
presidency, to be officially revealed this June. The
government has already publicly discussed main themes, which
include: climate change, EU enlargement and the Eastern
Partnership, and harmonizing EU visa and asylum policies.

-- Climate Change: Climate change will be PM Reinfeldt's top
priority, with the goal of reaching a binding international
agreement at the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to
be held in Copenhagen this December, near the end of the
Swedish presidency. Key elements should involve clean-tech
transfers and participation by India and China to reduce
carbon emissions. Your interlocutors will be interested in
hearing your views on U.S. plans for the COP 15.

-- EU Enlargement: This is a major issue for Foreign Minister
Carl Bildt, who wants to ensure EU enlargement continues on
schedule. Sweden strongly supports membership for Turkey and
wants to ensure the accession process moves forward.
President Obama's comments on the strategic importance of
Turkey joining the EU were warmly welcomed here (in contrast
to France). Bildt also wants talks with Moldova,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Kosovo to continue, with the
latter three proceeding together towards membership. Bildt
is actively negotiating with key actors in the Western
Balkans to resolve territorial disputes, including the border
dispute between Croatia and Slovenia; the Swedes hoped
Croatia would join the EU during their Presidency, but the
lack of progress on the border issue has dampened
expectations. Your MFA interlocutors will be especially
interested in U.S. thinking on ways to keep Turkish EU
accession on track, and on the challenges of Muslim
integration in Europe.

-- The Eastern Partnership (EaP): A Swedish-Polish
initiative, the EaP is scheduled to be implemented during the
Swedish presidency. It is an agreement between the EU and

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Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia.
The Partnership aims to go beyond the current EU Neighborhood
Policy to deepen bilateral cooperation and integration,
including the possibility of cooperating on security,
migration, economic, environmental and social issues. The
goal of the EaP is to give these former Soviet republics the
opportunity to have a partnership with the EU similar to what
Norway has: select membership benefits without the membership
card. The Swedes are concerned about Russian FM Lavrov's
recent criticisms that the EaP is an effort by the EU to
expand its "sphere of influence."

-- Refugees and Migration: The EU's "Hague Program" on
migration and asylum will end in 2009 and Sweden already has
taken the lead within the EU in developing a new five-year
"Stockholm Program" that will aim to further harmonize EU
asylum and migration policies, leading to a common European
migration and asylum system. During 2006-07, Sweden accepted
some 40,000 Iraqi refugees for resettlement -- nearly as much
as the rest of Europe and United States combined. Swedes
want to see other EU Members States do their share.

Non-Alignment and NATO
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5. In 2007, Sweden's Parliamentary Defense Commission (an
influential high-level advisory group that includes
representative of all seven parliamentary parties as well as
think tankers and retired senior government officials)
presented a report on Sweden's security that included a
significant abandonment of traditional non-alignment
language. The report states that "Sweden will not stay
passive if a catastrophe or an attack would strike another EU
member state or another Nordic country. We expect these
countries to act the same way if Sweden were to be attacked."
After reviewing the report, Bildt wrote in his blog that
"With this, option of neutrality is removed from every
reasonable case.... The ground is prepared for security
policy cooperation not least in Northern Europe but also
within the EU and with NATO."


6. Of the four parties in the center-right governing
coalition, the Moderates (including your primary
interlocutor, MP Karin Enstrom) and Liberals are pro-NATO;
the Christian Democrats are abandoning their NATO
agnosticism; and the Center Party -- the second largest in
the coalition -- will go along only if the opposition Social
Democrats do. An agreement dating from 2002 binds the main
political parties to making no move on joining NATO without
consensus of the others. This gives the opposition Social
Democrats a veto - which they are exercising. The Swedish
public, in general, remains skeptical of NATO, but poll
numbers show support for NATO membership slowly rising,
especially after Russia's invasion of Georgia last August.
PM Reinfeldt and Defense Minister Sten Tolgfors have made
clear that NATO membership is not on the agenda during the
government's current term of office, but the implicit
conclusion of this is that if the center-right alliance has a
second term in office beginning in 2010, then the question of
NATO membership might surface again. Tolgfors put forward
the conditions for a formal NATO application: political
consensus (i.e., Social Democrats on board),public
acceptance, and not without Finland.


7. Although Sweden is not a member of NATO, the current
government and most of the defense and security establishment
understands the essential role NATO has played in
guaranteeing a Europe "whole, free and at peace." Sweden has
taken part in NATO's Partnership for Peace since 1994, and it
participated in peacekeeping operations in Bosnia under NATO
command. The Reinfeldt government has expanded cooperation
with NATO in multiple arenas; for example, it has expanded
its diplomatic mission to NATO and Sweden will host nine
other NATO and non-NATO air forces in the "Loyal Arrow"
live-fire air combat exercise during June 8-18.

Afghanistan Contributions/ISAF
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8. Within the framework of ISAF, Sweden leads a Provincial
Reconstruction Team (PRT) in four northern provinces in
Afghanistan. There are currently 400 troops stationed in the
PRT, which is headquartered in Mazar-e-Sharif. Sweden plans
to deploy another 100 before year's end. Three Swedish
policemen and six advisors are currently assigned to EUPOL,
the EU,s police training program in Afghanistan, and this
commitment will likely double in 2009. Sweden supports the
training of the Afghanistan National Army (ANA) by providing
one Operational Mentoring and Liaison Team (OMLT),and will
contribute a second in late fall. For the summer elections,
Sweden will send a C-130 Hercules aircraft with support crew
for ISAF HQ's disposal, and three medevac helicopters in

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2010-2011.


9. In 2008, Sweden opened its embassy in Kabul, establishing
a permanent presence. The embassy is currently staffed by
seven MFA employees who form the hub of a more active and
coordinated Swedish assistance program. Sweden is working to
increase its civilian presence in the four northern provinces
for which it is responsible, providing $57.5 million to
Afghanistan in 2008 -- the largest recipient of Swedish
assistance in Asia. Democracy, human rights and good
governance programs received roughly half of these funds,
most of which was doled out through the Afghanistan
Reconstruction Fund. In 2009, Sweden expects to provide
$17.5 million in humanitarian assistance alone to Afghanistan.


10. Your interlocutors will be most interested in the
Administration's Afghanistan-Pakistan policy and your
thinking on regional security trends, including Russia. You
may want to thank the Swedes for their important
contributions to Afghanistan -- emphasizing both the
development assistance and military support -- including in a
public setting. On a proportional basis, Sweden is in the
very top echelon of EU Member States in terms of the numbers
of troops and the amount of money dedicated to the effort in
Afghanistan.

Kosovo/KFOR
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11. Sweden has 260 troops in NATO's KFOR mission in Kosovo,
and the government says they will remain through the end of
the year. At the same time, the MFA thinks the mission needs
to be calibrated to meet challenges on the ground, which are
increasingly becoming "police work in nature." Consequently,
Sweden welcomes the proportional shift with more police
officers coming in as military troops depart. Sweden is
tentatively planning to keep some military troops in Kosovo
in 2010, but will look closely at taskings that come out of
the June NATO defense ministerial to see whether it needs to
change its deployments.

Nordic Defense Cooperation/High North
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12. Nordic Defense Cooperation (NDC) is an initiative among
the Nordic countries to enhance interoperability and capacity
by pooling military resources and focusing on economies of
scale. The Swedes, Finns, and Norwegians all say that NDC
will not detract from their current commitments to NATO --
either as full members or Partnership for Peace members --
but will instead improve NATO commitments by increasing
interoperability with NATO. Your interlocutors will likely
raise NDC, as it is an important cost-saving initiative for
the Ministry of Defense during the financial crisis. There
is not yet an official USG policy position on NDC, though the
issue has been discussed within the USG interagency in
positive terms. Sweden does not border the Arctic Ocean and
is therefore less focused on the High North than Norway, but
it is interested in cooperating with its Nordic partners on
security in the region.

Energy Security
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13. Sweden views energy security and energy independence as a
key priority during its EU Presidency. Sweden shares USG
concerns over Russia's ability (and willingness) to use the
threat of shutting off gas supplies to Europe as a
geopolitical tool. Sweden believes that Europe should have
access to diversified sources of energy and that the Baltic
states must cooperate more closely with one another when it
comes to energy. Sweden is pleased that the EU and the
Baltic countries will fund Swedlink, a 700-1,000 MW undersea
electricity cable from Sweden to Lithuania that will
distribute power to all three Baltic countries. Swedish
commentators have expressed concern about Russia's proposed
Nordstream undersea gas pipeline to Germany that would bypass
the Baltics and other Eastern European countries. The
government must soon decide whether to grant a permit
allowing Nordstream to transit Swedish Exclusive Economic
Zone waters.
SILVERMAN