Norway shuts Ethiopia embassy after threat

Norway said yesterday it had closed its embassy in the Ethiopian capital after an unspecified threat two weeks after the country was put on a list of terror targets by al Qaeda.

"We closed the embassy today and it will be closed to the public for the rest of the week," Norway's Foreign Ministry spokesman Karsten Klepsvik said.

"We received a threat against the embassy and we are taking it seriously," Klepsvik told Reuters. But he declined to give further details about the threat to the Addis Ababa embassy.

It was the first direct threat to a Norwegian embassy since an al Qaeda officer last month listed Norway's embassies and commercial interests with those of the United States, Britain and Australia as targets for attack by Muslims. The al Qaeda network is suspected of carrying out the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

The Norwegian embassy in Kenya was closed on May 29 after an e-mail threat was sent to the Italian embassy in the same building in Nairobi, but it was soon reopened.

Norway says it does not know why it has been listed as a target for terror attacks. But theories are that it could be due to its participation in the US-led war in Afghanistan or to legal action taken in Norway against the Iraqi Kurdish founder of the Islamic group Ansar al-Islam, which Washington suspects of links to al Qaeda.

Norway did not support the US-led war in Iraq. Norwegian daily newspaper Aftenposten said in its online edition the US embassy in Addis Ababa would also be closed for three days for security reasons.