Halonen: Häkämies may have given cause for puzzlement abroad about foreign policy line
Tarja Halonen
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Jyri Häkämies
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Ilkka Kanerva
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According to President Tarja Halonen, the speech by Defence Minister Jyri Häkämies in Washington last week may have given some people cause to wonder about the Finnish foreign policy line.
"Personally I would have delivered the speech in a slightly different manner", said Halonen during an interview for the YLE Saturday morning TV programme Lauantaiseura.
Halonen took the view that Häkämies would have done well to remember that a speech made in Washington DC is listened to elsewhere besides the United States capital. She offered the reminder that whilst Finnish foreign policy may be made in Helsinki, it is expressed and directed abroad.
"If I had come out with that speech, then I can just imagine what the reaction would have been", said Halonen.
The greatest attention in Häkämies's address to the CSIS (Centre for Strategic and International Studies) was drawn to a reference to Finland's three main security policy challenges being "Russia, Russia, and Russia".
According to Foreign Minister Ilkka Kanerva, who is of the same National Coalition Party as Jyri Häkämies, the discussion that has followed from the speech gives more cause for astonishment than the speech itself.
Kanerva commented to Helsingin Sanomat that with the exception of one sentence the text fitted perfectly into the frames of accepted Finnish policy, and that there was no call for all the panic reactions.
Kanerva went on to say that there was no shift in Finnish foreign policy as such, but rather a change in the level of activeness with which it was pursued - in his view a natural outcome of the change of government following the elections in the spring.
Kanerva, who has long had connections with the world of sports, used a track & field metaphor to describe what he saw as "a leg of the relay" in which the National Coalition Party are to the fore.
He cited the long period under President Urho Kekkonen when it was Centre Party views that held sway, and that thereafter there had been a similar dominance of Social Democrat thinking in foreign policy.
This was apparently a reference to the time when SDP Chairman Paavo Lipponen was Prime Minister and Erkki Tuomioja, also of the SDP, was Foreign Minister. Halonen was herself a Social Democrat MP and former Foreign Minister before taking up the Presidency in 2000.
President Halonen said on Saturday that her relations with her Foreign Minister were in good order.
Kanerva in turn interpreted Halonen's remarks as a signal that there was no need for further comment on Häkämies's speech.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 16.9.2007
More on this subject:
 COMMENTARY: Smiling Halonen lets go with both barrels
Helsingin Sanomat
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