Political amnesia (Dagsavisen)

Christian Democrat politician and former Transport Minister Lars Gunnar Lie risks impeachment for allegedly having withheld information relating to the choice of site for Oslo’s new airport in 1990. The commission of inquiry, led by legal expert professor Eivind Smith, believes impeachment should be considered. The inquiry believes Mr Lie neglected his duty to inform both the Syse government and the Storting in the spring of that year. However, the Smith Inquiry has largely exonerated the Labour Party’s former Transport Minister, Kjell Oppseth.

Lie claims he did pass on information (Aftenposten)

Lars Gunnar Lie claims that he did pass on to government colleagues the expert advice he had received to evaluate several alternative sites for a new main airport. But he cannot remember who he told. Mr Lie, who was Transport Minister in Jan P. Syse’s government, rejects the conclusions of the Smith Inquiry which has criticised him for not having informed his own government of the Civil Aviation Authority’s expert opinion.

Kleppe told to eat humble pie (Dagbladet)

The steering committee of the Progress Party’s Vest-Agder branch has thrown a last lifeline to Vidar Kleppe. If he is willing to admit all past mistakes and eat a sufficient quantity of humble pie, they will go to Oslo to plead his case. Vidar Kleppe says he wants a reconciliation with the party’s central leadership. But before the month is out Mr Kleppe will probably have been kicked out of the Progress Party and have taken first place on an alternative list of election candidates for the Vest-Agder county constituency.

Auditor General slates Foreign Ministry over Russian nuclear safety projects (Dagens Næringsliv)

The Office of the Auditor General has condemned the Foreign Ministry for abysmal project management and follow-up of the nuclear safety projects Norway has financed in northeast Russia. According to the Auditor General the Foreign Ministry has not had the necessary oversight to follow up, manage and plan the work in an effective manner. During the period 1995 to 1999 the Storting allocated around NOK 590 million for various nuclear safety projects under the Norwegian Plan of Action for Nuclear Safety.

Kværner merger would make Røkke king of the hill (Verdens Gang)

If Kjell Inge Røkke wins the battle for Kværner he will become the uncrowned king of Norwegian industry. In addition to acquiring a huge asset base, he will also gain control of at least NOK 6 billion which can be used for further investment. Mr Røkke claims that a merger between Kværner and Aker Maritime’s offshore business will create a profitable corporation which can grow both at home and abroad. In just a few years he envisages two corporations with more than 10,000 employees, each with profits amounting to several billion kroner.

Union reps not quite so hostile (Dagens Næringsliv)

Kværner’s union reps are now talking to Kjell Inge Røkke about his plans to merge Kværner and Aker Maritime. "We are willing to listen to his arguments. There are bound to be things they have investigated and discussed which it would be useful for us to find out more about," says Rolf Utgård, Kværner’s senior union representative.

Smaller parachutes – bigger salaries (Dagens Næringsliv)

Give senior executives higher salaries instead of lucrative golden parachutes, says Jens Ulltveit-Moe, president of the Confederation of Norwegian Business and Industry (NHO). The NHO has just published a pamphlet advising companies on executive salaries and golden parachutes. However the organization does not wish to dictate how much executives should be paid. The NHO believes that severance pay agreements should be limited to between one and two years, and asks company boards not to award golden parachutes to executives who leave voluntarily. Several of the senior executives of the NHO’s largest member companies have compensation agreements which run counter to this advice.

Colleges to get university status (NTB)

Education Minister Trond Giske has given his backing to proposals which would give university status to several colleges of higher education. In a report to the Storting to be published 9 March Mr Giske will propose that the scientific colleges of higher education be given leave to call themselves universities, and that colleges providing PhD level teaching in at least one subject be allowed to apply for university status. This means that the Stavanger, Bodø and Agder Colleges of Higher Education are all eligible to become universities.

Worth Noting

• Thorbjørn Jagland and Gro Harlem Bruntland refused to give the Smith Inquiry access to Labour Government documents. Professor Eivind Smith, who led the commission of inquiry, says the lack of disclosure is regrettable. "It would have made the inquiry’s conclusions more credible if the Labour Party had provided access to relevant documents," says professor Smith. (Dagbladet)
• Progress Party chairman Carl I. Hagen has called for the establishment of a parliamentary committee to make a preliminary evaluation of whether there are grounds for the impeachment of both Lars Gunnar Lie (Christian Democrat) and Kjell Oppseth (Labour). (NTB)
• The Progress Party’s "hitmen" received a frosty welcome when they arrived in Kristiansand. If Vidar Kleppe is to be purged from the party, the process will probably have to be engineered from Oslo. (Aftenposten)
• "There are still not the smallest grounds to expel me from the party," says a confident Vidar Kleppe. (Verdens Gang)
• While Norwegian businesses are crying out for more workers, ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosovo who already have jobs are to be sent home. Not very sensible, says the Norwegian Organization for Asylum Seekers (NOAS). (Vårt Land)
• The Norwegian dairy cooperative, Tine Norske Meierier, sells its cheese at a lower price to Rema than to other supermarket chains. "This is extremely galling. If that is how Tine wants it, we will cut the amount of cheese we buy from them," says Øyvind Bergstrøm of the supermarket chain, Coop Norge. Coop has a 25 per cent share of the Norwegian market. (Nationen)
• Norway’s 402 pharmacies are facing increased competition. The new Pharmacies Act sets no ceiling on the number of pharmacies which are permitted in Norway, nor any limits on their location. (Dagsavisen)

Today’s comment from Aftenposten

Labour MPs had good reason to smile yesterday when professor Eivind Smith, one of the country’s leading legal scholars, presented the conclusions of the inquiry that has been investigating "various circumstances relating to the new main airport and the airport express train", as it says in the commission of inquiry’s mandate. The only people the inquiry with hindsight found grounds to criticize are former Transport Minister Lars Gunnar Lie and possibly other members of the Syse government. However, in our opinion the commission’s basis for raising the possibility of Mr Lie’s impeachment is flimsy, to say the least. The commission says that because the then Transport Minister was opposed to investigating alternative sites to Gardermoen, he "failed to make the Government and the Storting aware that there were good grounds for a parallel investigation into the suitability of at least one alternative site for a new main airport (eg Hobøl)". According to the commission this may have affected the final location of the airport. Let us just remind ourselves that in 1992 there was no parliamentary majority for building Gardermoen Airport, but nor was there a majority for evaluating Hobøl, which Mr Lie is now being criticized for not seeing the significance of two years earlier. Of course we cannot rule out that new details may come to light which will again return the decision to build Gardermoen Airport to centre stage. But after the Smith Inquiry’s 681 pages, it will require some fundamentally new information to change the picture created by the current investigation. It seems, therefore, that Gardermoen Airport is on the verge of losing its importance as a powerful generator of political conflict.