Norway Shuts Embassy amid Terror Warning

Norway's embassy closing in Riga, Latvia, coincided with a warning by the United States to its citizens in the Nordic and Baltic states, to be extra vigilant due to a security threat.

The United States said it received "threat information" on the eve of the US presidential election, news agencies reported.

"US citizens in the Nordic and Baltic countries (should) be vigilant as to their surroundings, especially in centers of ground-based mass transit," the State Department said in a statement on the US embassy Web site in Helsinki.

Rare warnings

It did not give details or say if the warning was linked to Tuesday's election. Terror warnings have been rare in the Nordic region.

Norway shut its its embassy, but claimed the closing had nothing to do with the US warning.

"Our embassy will remain closed today," foreign ministry spokesman Karsten Klepsvik told the Agence France Presse news service.

"This decision was reached on the basis of information that we have come by and which is of such a nature that we deemed it best to close the embassy," he added, refusing to disclose what kind of threat had been directed at the embassy or where the information had come from.

"The source about a possible terrorism threat in Latvia was related to an Islamic fundamentalist organization in one of the Scandinavian countries," Krists Leiskans, an adviser of Latvian interior minister Eriks Jekabsons, told AFP.

But he declined to say whether the closure of Norway's embassy in Riga was related to the threats by this organization. "No comments on that," the official said.

Latvia boosts security

Meanwhile, Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga said after a meeting of the national security council in Riga that the small Baltic state had taken measures to boost security.

"Terrorism threats have not increased in Latvia now. But every country has to react if its name comes up," she said.

The Norwegian government raised its domestic terrorism alert level at the beginning of October, following an audio message attributed to Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri, threatening the interests of several Western and Asian countries, including Norway.

Norway, a NATO member, did not take part in the US-led war in Iraq, which it was against, but did send in 130 engineering troops on a United Nations' mandate to help in the reconstruction of the war-torn country. Those troops were called home at the end of June.

On Friday, Latvian police announced that they had increased security around public buildings and foreign embassies after receiving information regarding terrorism threats from the US, Norway and Estonia.

The Latvian news agency LETA reported on Saturday that at least three facilities -- a trade center, an embassy and a state business -- had been identified as possible targets.