Sweden’s 'magnificently undiplomatic' bust-up with Saudi Arabia

Margot Wallstrm, Sweden's foreign minister, has come under fire after criticising Saudi Arabia's record on human rights and women's rights. The Arab League cancelled a speech she was scheduled to give, several Arab ambassadors to Sweden were temporarily recalled, and business visas to Saudi Arabia for Swedish citizens have been cut back.

This has led to "howls of anguish from the business community", who are "anxious that lucrative contracts in the Middle East could pass them by", says Richard Milne in the FT.

Combined with the cancellation of a decade-long military cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia, Swedish firms fear the bust-up could "end up costing exporters in the largest Nordic economy billions of kronor in lost sales", say Amanda Billner and Niklas Magnusson on bloomberg.com

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Yet Wallstrm was right to slate Saudi Arabia's "monstrous treatment of dissidents and women", says The Guardian. Anybody who puts principles above money will acknowledge that. "Sweden's whole industrial establishment was rangedagainst Ms Wallstrm. Public opinion, however, was not."

Her "magnificently undiplomatic" views put the "cowardice" of other countries including the UK in continually ducking the subject into sharp relief. The good news is that she appears to have come out the winner. The Saudis have agreed to return their ambassador, even though Wallstrm has merely said she "regrets any offence she may have caused", rather than providing the apology they demanded.

Still, the lesson from this bust-up is a shameful one, says Nick Cohen in The Spectator. "If the cries of Je Suis Charlie' were sincere, the Western world would be convulsed with worry and anger about the Wallstrm affair." Instead, we've seen how few are prepared to support her when she tells an obvious truth.

"Outside Sweden, the Western media has barely covered the story", while "EU allies have shown no inclination whatsoever" to back her up. For all the frothing by the Saudis and Sweden's establishment, "the scandal is that there isn't a scandal".