War of nerves stretches into the night (Aftenposten)

Negotiations between the Progress Party and the ruling coalition parties over next year’s national budget turned sour yesterday evening, and the two sides left the negotiating table without reaching an agreement. A tight-lipped Siv Jensen (Progress Party) hurried away from the meeting. It was clear that the negotiations had reached a critical phase. The Conservative Party’s chief negotiator, Jan Tore Sanner described the impasse as, "the moment of truth". It remains unclear if the outcome will be a compromise or a total breakdown in negotiations. Both the Progress Party and the ruling coalition parties said that they were in a constructive phase, and the atmosphere earlier in the day had been fairly optimistic. It seemed as though both sides were keen to reach a negotiated settlement, but the problems piled up as the evening wore on. According to sources Aftenposten has spoken to, the Progress Party has been offered a little over NOK 4 billion, but this is still a fair way from being satisfactory to the party.

Hagen the winner regardless (Nationen)

"Carl I. Hagen is driving head on at the Government, and is banking on the Prime Minister swerving to avoid a collision. Mr Hagen knows that he is the winner regardless of what happens," said political science professor, Trond Nordby. Professor Nordby is convinced that, having been invited back for another round of negotiations, Mr Hagen is more interested in the Progress Party’s standing in the polls than the actual nitty gritty of the budget itself. "When Carl I. Hagen says he is worried for the country’s future, he is simply playing to the gallery. I think it all rings extremely hollow when he says in one breath that the country needs a budget at the same time as he publishes an alternative budget of a kind which is certainly not going to reconcile any differences. He is letting the negotiations proceed, but he is also allowing them to run off the rails," said professor Nordby.

Christian Democrat MP phoned Labour mayors (Verdens Gang)

Christian Democrat MP Ivar Østberg has telephoned several Labour mayors and asked them to exert pressure within the Labour Party in order to muster a parliamentary majority behind the budget. "I am a member of the Storting’s Local Government Committee and am worried about the effect on local democracy if local authorities are not given greater financial elbow-room," he said. Labour leader Jens Stoltenberg has reacted strongly to Mr Østberg’s campaign. "This is a highly unusual course of action and rather ham-fisted. Of course it is nice that the Christian Democrats want to work with us, but they should do so openly instead of phoning our mayors in secret," said Mr Stoltenberg.

Norwegian shipowners look forward to lucrative Nato contracts (Dagbladet)

The new, expanded Nato will benefit Norway. Norwegian shipowners can expect gilt-edged leasing contracts when the alliance starts modernizing and strengthening its military capability. According to the treaty on increasing the alliance’s military strength – dubbed the capability treaty – which was adopted at the Nato summit in Prague yesterday, Norway is to be one of the leading Nato countries when it comes to strategic sea transport. "Instead of expensive investments, the plan is to sign rental and leasing contracts with civilian shipowners, who undertake at short notice to provide shipping assets for Nato’s use. We want a flexible scheme, which is as cost effective as possible," said Defence Minister Kristin Krohn Devold in an interview with Dagbladet. Ms Devold also hopes that Nato training exercises in Norway will become more frequent following the admission of seven new countries to the alliance.

No confidence (Klassekampen)

A recent opinion poll, carried out by the Armed Forces’ media centre in collaboration with Omnijet, shows that 74 per cent of the population feels that public confidence in the Armed Forces has fallen as a result of the cluster bomb scandal. Over 50 per cent of those polled feel that the Chief of Defence Staff, Gen Sigurd Frisvold, does not have full control over the country’s armed forces. "This poll confirms that the cluster bomb scandal has been very bad for the Armed Forces. On the other hand it is not terribly surprising that people feel this is damaging, such a short a time after the event," said Brigadier Kjell Grandehagen, head of communications at the Headquarters Defence Command Norway, when the poll results were released on 7 November. However, the poll was not made widely public, despite the fact that Kjetil Bjørklund (Socialist Left Party) asked Defence Minister Kristin Krohn Devold to comment on that very subject at the Defence Committee hearing held the same day. Ms Devold refused to respond, other than to say that she did not consider the reputation of the Armed Forces to have been weakened. In fact she said she considered the Armed Forces’ reputation to be strong, despite the fact that the cluster bomb affair had been burdensome.

Local authorities fear losses in the billions (Nationen)

Finance Minister Per-Kristian Foss is thinking of taking over collection of the country’s taxes, despite the fact that local council tax collectors today gather in 99-100 per cent of all tax liabilities. Local authorities fear lost revenues amounting to billions of kroner, and are demanding that the national registration offices, at least, remain under local council control. Tens of thousands of people are currently registered at an incorrect address, according to estimates from the association of tax collectors and chief financial officers. The Ministry of Finance will shortly initiate a study to see whether the local authorities should lose responsibility for tax collection. Local government tax collectors and chief financial officers are already sceptical about the dominant role of central government in the local management of the national registration scheme and tax collection services. They would prefer the role of central government to be reduced rather than increased.

Plight of homeless worse in Norway (nrk.no)

Around 6,200 people are homeless in Norway, and according to a recent survey carried out by the Norwegian Institute of Urban and Regional Research (NIBR), their plight is much worse than that of homeless people in other Nordic countries. In Norway public housing amounts to only four per cent of all homes. In Sweden and Denmark, 20 per cent of the housing market is made up of cheap, publicly-owned, rented accommodation. Ivar Brevik, a researcher with the NIBR and responsible for the survey, wonders where the political will is to improve the situation for the 6,200 people in Norway who at any one time are without fixed abode.

1. Worth Noting

• 50 years after the end of the second world war, those individuals fathered by soldiers in the German occupying forces are to receive an apology for the treatment they were subjected to in the post-war period. In the Storting, a unanimous Justice Committee yesterday asked the Government to make amends to the "German children" during the course of 2003.
  (Vårt Land)
• Jon Fredrik Baksaas, chief executive of Telenor, continues to make cuts at the company. This time it is the turn of Telenor’s research and development department. More than one tenth of the staff will lose their jobs. Employees have been called to a general meeting on Monday where the cuts will be officially announced.
  (Dagsavisen)
• Finance Credit will probably soon be forced into liquidation. On Wednesday the boards of directors of Finance Credit Norge AS and Finance Credit Group AS asked for debt settlement proceedings to be initiated. This means that the companies could shortly go into liquidation.
  (Verdens Gang)
• Finance Credit applied yesterday for the initiation of debt settlement proceedings. At the same time a number of Finance Credit’s customers look set to go bankrupt themselves because they have not received the money Finance Credit holds on their behalf. Over the past few days they have worked their fingers to the bone in an attempt to retrieve the money that the factoring services company owes them. Finance Credit’s customers saw their money locked up when the banks, with the blessing of the Norwegian Banking, Insurance and Securities Commission, froze the company’s client accounts.
  (Aftenposten)
• NOK 3.7 billion of the funds borrowed by Nordlandsbanken could fall due within four months. "The bank is in an acute liquidity squeeze as a result of the situation in which it now finds itself," said banking analyst Linda Støle at Gjensidige Nor Equities.
  (Dagens Næringsliv)
• For just NOK 1,680 a day you too can cruise on board the luxury liner, The World, and mix with the rich and famous who own apartments worth NOK 50 million. Package tours aboard The World are now selling for half price through the internet-based travel portal gotogate.no.

2. Today’s comment from Dagbladet

Nato decided yesterday to admit seven new members, all of them countries from the former East Bloc. The expansion of the alliance is a historic move, and the choice of Prague to host the summit at which the decision was made was strongly symbolic. Prague was the city where Soviet tanks crushed a burgeoning democratic movement in 1968. Today, Russian representatives are present as partners in Nato, a security alliance that has been transformed into a pan-European institution. The old North Atlantic alliance against the East Bloc in a divided Europe is a closed chapter. The expansion of Nato is politically motivated, and Nato’s new political role as an integrating force in Europe is important and right. Today, Nato and the EU are Europe’s major stabilizers. These institutions’ admission of new members can be seen as political glue patching up former enmities. But there remains one major difference between Nato and the EU. Nato has a non-European superpower in its midst. The superpower we see under the leadership of George W. Bush is different from the superpower that participated in the creation of the alliance in 1949. Nato also decided yesterday to create a new strike force to be deployed anywhere in the world. In this way Nato is once again trying to become relevant for the USA in a military context. But the attempt by George W. Bush to get Nato to issue a hostile declaration against Saddam Hussein is an indication of how the USA wants to use the new Nato in its battle against global evil. It is important that Nato does not turn solely into a support unit for the USA. A Nato without a clear European integrity would be a dangerous and destructive Nato.