Swedish FM calls off Israel visit

JERUSALEM, Sept. 7 (UPI) -- Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt has canceled a visit to Israel in the wake of a diplomatic row between the two countries, officials said.

The foreign minister said the cancellation is a matter of "bad timing" because of Israel's ongoing Palestinian peace agreement negotiations with the United States, but unnamed sources told the Israeli newpaper Haaretz that Bildt called off the visit because of the likely icy reception he would get in Jerusalem.

Israeli officials are reportedly upset with Bildt because he refused to condemn an article that appeared in the Swedish daily Aftonbladet this summer in which a free-lance reporter quoted Palestinians alleging that Israeli soldiers killed Arabs in the 1990s in order to harvest their organs for transplants.

Bildt refused to sanction Aftonbladet, saying freedom of the press was an important hallmark of Swedish society, but Israeli Minister Avigdor Lieberman has described the stance as being "hypocritical," Haaretz said.