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Norway denies report on missing passports

B. Muralidhar Reddy

COLOMBO: Norway on Tuesday denied that a "large number of Norwegian passports were stolen" and said the allegations by Sri Lankan envoy to Washington were "drawing links between unrelated matters and have no basis in reality".

In an interview to the Washington Post Radio last week, Sri Lanka's Ambassador to U.S., Bernard Goonetileke, alleged that the LTTE had stolen 1,30,000 Norwegian passports and sold them to the "highest bidders' including operatives of the Al-Qaeda.

He said a "LTTE rebel" was caught in Thailand with 700 of the stolen passports. Mr. Goonetileke told The Hindu over telephone from Washington on Saturday that Norway had lodged a complaint with the Interpol about the passports stolen "over a period of time".

In a press statement released here, Norwegian Foreign Ministry said, "These allegations are drawing links between unrelated matters and have no basis in reality. The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs would therefore like to clarify the facts."

Serious offence

He said the Norwegian police confirmed that a policeman had sold nine blank passports to a Norwegian national of Sri Lankan origin. Both were sentenced to imprisonment in 2006 for the serious offence.

"Like other countries, Norway wants to stop the illicit use of national travel documents by criminals. Therefore, Norway has established one of the world's most effective systems for reporting individual passports that are missing to both Interpol and other Schengen countries. Over the last 10 years, Norway has reported 1,30,000 missing passports to Interpol. This figure includes all the passports that have been registered by the police as lost or stolen."

The statement said the missing passports corresponds to the figures for comparable countries in Europe, and was "considerably lower" than the figures for the larger European countries.

It said Norway had no information suggesting that 700 passports had been confiscated in Thailand or that 700 blank passports missing. "The Norwegian police has no information indicating that the LTTE or Al-Qaeda are in the possession of missing Norwegian passports."

The air force said its jets pounded a "pre-identified" LTTE training complex in Vavuniya on Tuesday.

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