There are many terms for what Jonas Gahr Støre has been up to in the Rød-Larsen case.
Dagsavisen, however, has an amusing way of describing an outright lie.
Political editor Kristian Skard writes that the Prime Minister ‘misinformed’. He explained himself incorrectly, to put it mildly, according to the newspaper.
To put it mildly, yes. That is not an exaggeration. Støre appeared before the Storting’s Control Committee on 30 September and explained that Terje Rød-Larsen was not employed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and that his archives were therefore private. He mentioned only one assignment for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the late 1990s. We now know that Rød-Larsen was listed as a special adviser to the Foreign Minister as early as 1993 and 1994, and that following the Oslo Accords he entered into an agreement with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding salary, office space and a diplomatic passport.
The advisory post was even advertised on the Storting’s own website.
This is not something Støre has stumbled upon by chance. As Minister for Foreign Affairs in 2006, he had his press spokesperson state that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was not missing any documents, and the National Archives had to halt their investigation. Then, classified MFA documents and letters from Foreign Minister Johan Jørgen Holst were left in cardboard boxes in a basement storeroom in Frogner for nearly 20 years, until Økokrim found them in February.
Støre has since admitted that a ‘more thorough assessment’ could have been carried out at the time. That, too, is a amusing euphemism for a blatant lie.
The Constitution is crystal clear. No minister shall provide the Storting with incorrect or misleading information. The chair of the Control Committee, Per-Willy Amundsen of the FrP, believes there is every reason to ask whether Støre has done just that.
And it doesn’t stop there either:
In 2011, TV 2 asked Støre, who was then Foreign Minister, whether he had spoken to Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal. At first, he replied ‘no’. He then asked for the question to be repeated, and admitted that he had had a couple of telephone conversations with him in 2007. Just one month earlier, he had written to a Member of the Storting stating that Norway had never established relations with Hamas at a political level. Siv Jensen believed that he had misled the Storting, and it is difficult to see what else it could have been.
During last year’s election campaign, Støre promised free ferries, both in a video and in an interview with Øyposten. A few weeks after the election, the government presented a national budget in which that very scheme was to be changed. Støre apologised, and was asked in that connection whether it had been a mistake or a lie.
– “Nobody has lied here,” he replied.
How many times can a politician in government say something that isn’t true before something is done about it? Surely this cannot be allowed to go on indefinitely. Dagsavisen has clearly not yet reached that point. Perhaps that is not so surprising. The newspaper was called Arbeiderbladet until 1997, and is receiving over 21 million kroner in press subsidies this year.
Skard is, however, right on one point: the Control Committee must do its job. It can start by calling a spade a spade.
Støre is lying. Full stop.
