TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/86/86.3

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                                                                                March 10, 1986

WORLD

Bloody Blow to an Open Society


Shots in the night kill Olof Palme, an advocate of peace


It had been a relaxing evening for Swedish Prime Minister Olof
Palme, 59, and his wife Lisbeth. They had just been to an evening
showing of the new Swedish film The Brothers Mozart in a downtown
Stockholm cinema and had decided to take a walk afterward. For
the slight, hawk-nosed Swedish politician with a ready smile, it
had always been a matter of pride that he sometimes permitted
himself to wander freely about the capital, unencumbered by the
phalanx of bodyguards that protect other European heads of
government. As the Palmes walked along Sveavagen, Stockholm's
well-lighted main thoroughfare, a dark-haired man wearing a blue
ski jacket walked briskly up the couple, pulled out a handgun and
fired two shots at close range. A bullet struck the Prime
Minister in the back, and he crumpled to the snow-covered
pavement.

A taxi driver heard the shots and immediately called for help.
When police arrived, Mrs. Palme, herself grazed across the back by
a bullet, said, "Don't you recognize me?  My Olof has been shot."
Within minutes Palme was rushed to Sabbatsberg Hospital, where
doctors struggled in vain to keep him alive. At six minutes past
midnight Saturday morning he was declared dead. Palme thus became
the first Swedish leader to be killed since King Gustav III was
shot to death at a masked ball at Stockholm's opera house in 1792.

Police sealed off all exits to the city for hours after the
shooting, called a national alert, and stepped up patrols at
border crossings. It was the largest manhunt in Sweden's history,
but as the week began, no arrests had been made. Police
speculated that the murder might have been committed by any number
of disaffected groups, from Croatian nationalists to West German
terrorist factions.

Palme's assassination sent a wave of revulsion across Sweden,
which for decades has advertised itself as a model society largely
devoid of the social strains that create such wrenching political
violence. Stunned Swedes tossed red roses on the murder site;
some placed candles on the sidewalk. By Saturday morning, the
lines of mourners wound around the block. On a wall a banner was
hung, reading:  WHY MURDER A TRUE DEMOCRAT?  "It is an almost
unbelievable shock," said Ulf Adelsohn, leader of the conservative
opposition in the country's one-house parliament. "Sweden will
never be the same after this."  Following an all-night meeting of
key Swedish leaders, Acting Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson, 51,
who was promptly designated Palme's successor as party chief,
announced that the government would be dissolved, but would act on
an interim basis until parliament meets this week to choose a new
Prime Minister. Said Carlsson:  "This was a blow not just to Olof
Palme and his family but to Sweden as an open society."

Condolences poured into Stockholm from all over the world, with
many noting the irony that a man so devoted to peace and
nonviolence could be assaulted in anger. President Ronald Reagan
expressed his "great shock" and "sorrow in the face of this
senseless act of violence."  Said British Labor Party Spokesman
George Foulkes:  "It is an absolute tragedy. He was a very good
man, a very peace-loving man."

Born into a well-to-do-family and educated in the best schools,
Palme built his career on his reputation as a friend of the
laboring classes and of the poor and oppressed everywhere. His
egalitarianism and idealism often got him into trouble, not only
with conservatives at home but in the international arena, where
he sometimes seemed most comfortable.

Palme first came to public attention in the U.S. in 1968 when, as
Sweden's Education Minister, he marched side by side with the
North Vietnamese Ambassador to Moscow at a rally to protest the
American role in the Vietnam War. As Prime Minister in 1972 he
compared the U.S. bombing of Hanoi to the Nazi bombing of
Guernica. That and other pronouncements so infuriated President
Richard Nixon that he told the Swedes their Ambassador was no
longer welcome in Washington.

While in recent years relations have been less stormy, the U.S.
and Sweden have often been at odds. Palme was a firm backer of
the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and was seen by the U.S. as too
sympathetic to the Soviet position on questions of peace and the
nuclear buildup. Asked last summer what he and President Reagan
might have in common if they were to meet, Palme said with a
twinkle, "I suppose you could say we share the same political
slogan -- stay the course."

One of the formative experiences of Palme's life was a sojourn to
the U.S. in 1948. He zipped through four years at Kenyon College
in Ohio in one year, then took a four-month hitchhiking tour of 34
states. The poverty he saw amid plenty, he would say later,
helped him develop the intensely personal and emotional commitment
to Swedish-style socialism that guided him all his life.

Returning home to Sweden, he received a law degree at the
University of Stockholm in 1951 and immediately plunged into
Social Democratic politics. A protege of longtime Prime Minister
Tage Erlander's, Palme rose swiftly. He won Cabinet rank in 1963,
and when he replaced Erlander as Prime Minister six years later,
became the youngest head of government in Europe. In 1976 a
center-right coalition drove th socialists from office for the
first time in 44 years. Palme led the opposition and worked as a
troubleshooter in the Middle East for the United Nations.

The center-right government of Thorbjorn Falldin eventually
foundered during the worldwide recession following the 1979 oil
shocks, and in 1982 Palme and his socialists were returned to
power. Palme's economic policies, especially the creation of
controversial union-dominated investment funds, sparked angry
protests. Nonetheless, his mandate was renewed again only last
September in one of the sweetest electoral triumphs of his career.
"We've won the victory for the welfare state," he exulted.

As numb and disbelieving Swedes gathered last week to stare at the
small pool of blood in the snow where their leader had been gunned
down, they wept not just in grief at the death of a shrewd and
compassionate man, but at their unwelcome entry into the era of
political terrorism. As one commentator eloquently observed, "The
time of political innocence in Sweden has come to an end."

By Michael S. Serrill. Reported by William McWhirter and John
Kohan/Bonn

Vanishing Face on a Quite Street

Baffled police put out a dragnet for Palme's killer


IT was the kind of coincidence that police often depend upon to
solve difficult crimes. A 22-year-old woman was walking along a
street in central Stockholm shortly before midnight on Feb. 28 when
a man ran by her and paused under a streetlight. In that
brief instant, she got a good look at the person who not only
moments before may have gunnded down Prime Minister Olof Palme.
The woman turned out to be a portrait artist, and last week she
helped police assemble a composite sketch of the suspected
assassin. COpies of the computer-enhanced likeness were
immediately trasmitted around the world by wire services. Said
Stockholm Police Commissioner Hans Holmer:  "This is the first
witness who has given us a face."

By week's end the sketch had produced no arrests. Danish police
briefly detained two Yugoslavs after they crossed from Sweden to
Denmark on a ferry, then released them. Commissioner Holmer
revealed at a midweek new conference tht his officrs had followed
up on 4,000 heads and interviewed 600 people. He also announced
that the 120-officer team investigating the cae was being expanded
to 300, and tat the police were offering an unprecedented $70,000
reward for information leading to the assassin's conviction. Said
Holmer:  "This is a murder that cannot be compared to any other."

The commissioner fended off accusations tht his men had bungled the
probe from the beginning. Swedish newspapers charged that police
were slow in cordoning off the scene of the crime and di not set
up roadblocks out of the city until 90 minutes after the murder.
Investigators were reportedly so sloppy in examining the scene that
the only physical evidence of the shooting, two bullets, was
actually found by passersby. And police drew scorn upon themselves
when they publicly announded thir puzzlement at the origin and
uniqueness of the copper-tipped .357 Magnum cartridges, which could
have been purchased in a sporting-goods store a block away from the
Prime Minister's office.

More troubling, it was still unclear whether the assassination was
politically motivated. Police remained skeptical of claims by the
West German terror group the Red Mary Faction that it wa
responsible. Attention instead focused on activists from the
obscure Kurdish Workers' Party, a group of political exiles from
Turkey who, last August, vowed vengeance against the Swedish
government for labeling them "terrorists."

Stepped-up security measures since the murder include two
bodyguards at all times in public for acting Prime Minister Ingvar
Carlsson, who was replaced Palem as Social Democratic Party leader
and will probably be named Prime Minister next week. Carlsson will
speak at funeral services for Palme, scheduled for Marhc 15 at
Stockholm's city hall. A panoply of world leaders, including
Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and U.N. Secretary-General
Javier Perez de Cuellar, will attend. In keeping with the slain
Prime Minister's distain for dictatorships, five countries --
Chile, Afghanistan, Paraguay, Kampuchea and South Africa -- were
pointedly excluded from the ceremonies.

By Michael S. Serrill. Reported by John Kohan/Stockholm.

_______________________________________________________________
March 24, 1986
Starting Over In Stockholm

Palme's successor is chosen


The irony is inevitable. While Olof Palme's life reflected his
belief in an open society, his funeral was surrounded by the
tightest security Stockholm had ever seen. As the hand-drawn
catafalque carrying the slain Prime Minister's coffin wound
through the streets, 2,000 police, paramility troops and army
sharpshooters watched, guns at the ready, from street corners and
rooftops. Half a million Swedes watched the procession, along
with more than 600 foreign dignitaries, including 13 Presidents
and 19 Prime Ministers. "There are few statesmen who have had
such influence on international affairs and social change," said
United Nations Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar at a
memorial service at Stockholm's city hall. Said U.S. Secretary of
State George Shultz, who met privately with Soviet Premier Nikolai
Ryzhkov to discuss bilateral concerns shortly after the funeral:
"Palme was a man of compassion. We share your grief."

The somber ceremony marked a kind of coming-of-age for a country
long untouched by political violence. The man who was tapped to
launch the new era in Sweden is Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson,
51, the mild-mannered politician elected by Parliament three days
earlier to succeed Palme. After the new Prime Minister had spent
a week in the public eye and held a series of meetings with
visiting foreign leaders, the contrast with his predecessor was
vivid. While Palme often dazzled his listeners with his
rhetorical brilliance, Carlsson's speeches tended to be as wooden
as Swedish birch. And while Palme could be arrogant and abrasive,
Carlsson seemed cautious and conciliatory, more given to self-
deprecation than grand gestures.

But straitlaced Swedes, many of whom did not always approve of
Palme's flamboyant ways, welcomed the new leader. Said a Social
Democratic loyalist:  "If Swedes make any comparisons, they will
most likely be to Carlsson's advantage."  Noted one young
economist:  "Political life will be boring without Palme, but
hopes are now pinned on Carlsson's being a man of cooperation."

Born Nov. 9, 1934, in a provincial town of Boras in southwest
Sweden, Carlsson grew up on modest circumstances. The son of a
seamstress and coffee-factory worker, he graduated from a
commercial high school and went on to earn a degree in political
science at the University of Lund in 1958. With Palme, Carlsson
became a political protege of Prime Minister Tage Erlander, the
architect of the Swedish welfare state. His first major post was
as Minister of Education in the government formed by Prime
Minister Palme in 1969. Carlsson served Palme until his death,
acting as his personal deputy and attending to the mundane details
of political life that did not interest his boss.

Now that the understudy has the starring role, political observers
wonder whether Carlsson will maintain the high international
profile that Palme fashioned for Sweden or will preoccupy himself
with domestic issues. He takes office at a time when many Swedes
are beginning to view Sweden's cradle-to-grave social-service
system as a drain on their prosperity. There is some question
whether Carlsson can provide the leadership to continue to fend
off challenges from the nonsocialist opposition.

Carlsson says that little will change, especially in foreign
affairs. "It has been the Swedish attitude that it is not only up
to the superpowers to decide about the future of the world," he
told a press conference last week. The new Prime Minister insists
that he will be a persistent critic of the arms race and a strong
supporter of the Third World. For starters, Carlsson will travel
to the Soviet Union in April to attend already scheduled meetings
with Communist Party Leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Three days before the former Prime Minister was buried, the search
for his killer finally produced an arrest. Police jailed a
Swedish man in his 30s on suspicion of "complicity" in the murder.
The suspect, who was not named, had been near the scene of the
crime when it happened. His lawyer, who admitted that his client
bore a "certain resemblance" to a police sketch of the killer,
insisted that he was innocent.

By Michael S. Serrill. Reported by Julian Isherwood and John
Kohan/Stockholm.