A former supreme commander of the Swedish armed forces said on Thursday his country has firsthand accounts from inside the Russian navy that Soviet submarines had violated Swedish territorial waters in the 1980s.
Gen. Bengt Gustafsson, defence chief between 1986 and 1994, criticized the findings of a government commission that said last week it could not apportion blame for "repeated intrusions" in the Swedish Baltic archipelago in the 1980s and early 1990s.The commission said evidence did not justify any definite statements regarding the nationality of the intruders.
"But this is not an open question," Gustafsson told the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet, pointing the finger of blame firmly at the former Soviet Union.
He said the main problem faced by Swedish intelligence services operating in the former Soviet Union had been to sort out genuine informants from opportunists and hoaxers.
But there were examples, Gus-tavs-son said.
"A source has said that he himself was present in an operation in Swedish territorial waters. The purpose was said to be gathering intelligence," he said.
The source had accurately described some "very particular maneuvers" that matched the Swedish navy's own reports from the incident, Gustafsson added.
"The man was a member of an organization reporting to the Soviet defence forces," he said, but declined to give details.
The office of current Supreme Commander Ove Wiktorin declined comment on Gustafsson's allegations, but a spokesman said Wiktorin was very satisfied with the report of the government commission.
Sweden has in the past accused the former Soviet Union of sending submarines into its coastal waters, pursuing a much-publicized but unsuccessful naval hunt for alleged intruders - which on some occasions proved to be whales -throughout the 1980s.