Norwegian coalition breaks up after disagreement on ISIL repatriation

Progress party leader Siv Jensen announces her decision (Credit: Fredrik Varfjell/NTB Scanpix/AFP)

Norway's coalition government is close to collapse after a right-wing party pulled out over the repatriation of a woman charged with supporting the so-called Islamic State group in Syria.

The Progress Party leader Siv Jensen announced the move at a news conference, saying: "I brought us into government, and I'm now taking the party out." As part of conservative prime minister Erna Solberg's cabinet since 2013, Jensen had become Norway's longest-serving finance minister since World War II.

Jensen said it had become too difficult to get the Progress Party's libertarian policies brought to bear. Progress won the third-most seats at the 2017 election but went into coalition with the conservatives, a partnership later augmented by the Liberal and Christian Democratic parties. Solberg has announced her intention to remain as leader of a minority government, but parliamentary arithmetic makes it difficult to govern under such circumstances.

Even so, Norway's constitution does not permit early elections and with the next vote not due until September 2021, Solberg – nicknamed "Iron Erna" after her fellow female conservative leader, the UK's Margaret Thatcher, who was known as the "Iron Lady" – will have to work hard to either refashion a working majority or tough out another year-and-a-half with a minority in parliament.

Prime minister Erna Solberg at her own press conference after the announcement (Credit: Terje Bendiksby/NTB Scanpix/AFP

Repatriation complications

The crisis has been precipitated by the return of a 29-year-old Norwegian-Pakistani woman, who had left the country in 2013. She returned on Saturday with her five-year-old son, who needs medical treatment, and three-year-old daughter. The three had been living in the Kurdish-controlled al-Hol refugee camp in Syria.

The Progress Party had offered to help the woman's children, but sought to block the government from providing assistance to adults seeking to return to Norway after marrying foreign fighters or joining Islamist groups abroad. However, the woman refused to send her son back alone and last week, Solberg's cabinet decided to permit the woman to return.

The woman was arrested upon her return on suspicion of "participation in a terrorist organization." Her lawyer said she denies the charges against her and will cooperate fully with police.

Source(s): Reuters