Norwegian foreign minister to attend UN Security Council meeting

Oslo - Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store flew Tuesday to New York to attend a meeting of the UN Security Council on the crisis in Gaza. Store is currently chair of an international donors group for the Palestinians, known as Ad Hoc Liaison Committee. Oslo has joined calls for an end to the violence and urged Israel to halt its recent ground offensive in Gaza. Norway was also to review its holdings in companies that have operations in Israel and the Palestinian territories against the backdrop of the increased violence, Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen said. Halvorsen has asked a special ethics panel that advises the government on its holdings in Norway's state pension fund to conduct the review. The fund invests in some 7,000 companies worldwide. The fund includes the huge Petroleum Fund and is managed by the central bank. It was created to pay for Norway's future health and pension expenditures through investments outside the Norwegian economy. Halvorsen noted that earlier reviews have not revealed any breaches of human rights or ethical guidelines in Israel or the Palestinian territories. In a related development, a member of the Norwegian Labour Party urged Israeli President Shimon Peres to return his Nobel Peace Prize that he shared in 1994 with the late Israeli and Palestinian leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat. Parliament member Espen Johnsen told news agency NTB that Peres' defence of the offensive in Gaza was 'horrific' and that the veteran Israeli politician was 'not worthy' of the award. Nobel Committee secretary Geir Lundestad said 'it has never occurred that a laureate has returned the award after receiving it.' However, the 1973 co-winner Le Duc Tho of Vietnam declined to accept it when he was named along with Henry Kissinger of the US for negotiating the Vietnam peace accord, Lundestad noted.