Sweden’s Leader Olof Palme Slain : Reports on Escaped Gunman Conflict; Prime Minister’s Wife Slightly Hurt

STOCKHOLM — Prime Minister Olof Palme of Sweden was assassinated on a snowy downtown Stockholm sidewalk Friday night, shot twice at close range by a gunman minutes after he and his wife left a movie theater.

The Swedish news agency TT, quoting unnamed police sources, said Croatian separatists from the guerrilla group Ustasha were responsible for the assassination. Members of the group, seeking independence for Croatia from Yugoslavia, killed the Yugoslav ambassador to Sweden in the early 1970s.

However, Stockholm Police Chief Sune Sandstrom dismissed the agency’s report, saying, “There is nothing to indicate that there were political motives or that any political organization was behind the act.”

Early today, TT, again quoting police, said that an unidentifed man has been detained for questioning about the slaying. No details were given. A police source was quoted as adding, “We want to question him because his description concurs with that of a man seen on the spot of crime.”

Possible 2nd Suspect

Authorities said earlier that a second man may have been involved in the shooting and that both possible suspects may be foreigners.

Palme, 59, and his wife, Lisbeth, 55, had attended a movie premiere of a Swedish film called “The Brothers Mozart” and had stepped onto the Sveagagen, one of Stockholm’s major thoroughfares, from a side street when the assailant opened fire with a handgun, witnesses said. Police said he was hit at close range by at least two bullets, one in the chest and the other in the stomach.

Palme’s wife was grazed by one of the bullets but was not seriously hurt, police said.

Bystanders and Palme’s wife tried to help the prime minister as he lay bleeding in the snow, and a taxi driver called for an ambulance and police. He was taken to Sabbatsberg Hospital, with his wife at his side in the ambulance, and he died on the operating table shortly after midnight, hospital sources said.

Palme’s wife was treated at the hospital and released. She returned to the couple’s home early this morning about three hours after her husband died.

Police closed off the entire capital and issued a nationwide alert in the search for the assassin. A police report said squad cars chased a Volkswagen Passant sedan headed north.

“We have very little to go after so far, with only sketchy witness reports,” police chief Sandstrom said.

Little Violence

It was the first major political assassination in the modern history of Sweden, where political violence is virtually unknown.

Palme, noted for his outspokenness, his casual manner and his practice of mingling with ordinary citizens, often surprised foreign visitors by strolling unescorted to his home in Stockholm’s old town.

He had two bodyguards to protect him at official functions but frequently said he was proud that he could walk unattended through the capital and take vacations unescorted at his summer cottage on the island of Gotland.

There apparently were not any bodyguards around when Palme was shot down.

Ingvar Carlsson, the deputy prime minister, arrived at Government House at 1 a.m. today to lead a crisis meeting of the Cabinet. TT, which is Sweden’s domestic news agency, quoted him as saying: “We have asked all those we could get to come over here. It is horrible. I just got to know it 30 minutes ago.”

Carlsson will head an interim government until the Swedish parliament goes back into session from a recess next week.

“It is an almost unbelievable shock. It is a thing one cannot believe could happen in Sweden,” said Ulf Adelsohn, leader of the opposition Conservative Party. “It is a tragedy not only for Olof Palme’s family but for the democratic ideal all Swedes support.

“Sweden will never be the same,” he said. “The meaningless violence will always throw a shadow over our political life.”

Reagan Expresses Shock

In Washington, President Reagan expressed shock at the assassination of Palme.

“My sorrow in the face of this senseless act of violence is profound,” the President said in a statement issued by the White House.

Palme led the Social Democrats, Sweden’s socialist party. He first was prime minister from 1969-76, then returned to office in 1982 after leading his party to victory over an incumbent conservative coalition. He won reelection in 1985.

The biggest challenge to his government had come in past months from naval officers who complained that he was doing nothing to prevent the intrusion of Soviet submarines into Swedish waters.

The officers alleged that Palme was more interested in warming relations with the Soviets than protecting Swedish security. Some suggested the problem was so acute that Sweden should join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization--ending its long tradition of strict neutrality.

Palme first became well-known to Americans in the 1960s, as an outspoken critic of the U.S. role in Vietnam.

With North Vietnamese

When he was minister of education in 1968, Palme marched side-by-side with a North Vietnamese diplomat at an anti-American rally in Stockholm. It was an act that disturbed the U.S. government and brought calls from Swedish opposition parties for his resignation.

An aristocrat turned socialist, Palme was often controversial at home because of his leftist profile--and his tongue.

He annoyed political opponents with a mocking arrogance displayed in acid-sprinkled remarks, although he was never criticized for his ability to do the job.

“I am born in the upper class but I belong to the labor movement,” Palme once said. Born on Jan. 30, 1927, Palme was brought up as the youngest of three children in an upper-class family in the Swedish capital. As a child he was periodically in poor health but he was a good student. At 4 years of age, he spoke German and French as well as Swedish.

Best Private School

After graduating one year early, at 17, from one of Sweden’s best private schools at Sitguna in 1944, Palme went through the military service as a draftee to become a reserve cavalry lieutenant.

He won a scholarship to Ohio’s Kenyon College where in 1948 he racked up straight A’s for a bachelor’s degree in just one year. He hitchhiked for four months through 34 states on $300.

He later recalled he “saw how poor some people were in the world’s richest land.”

A year later, he married a Czechoslovak student in Prague simply to help her leave her Communist country for the West. They went to Sweden immediately after their December, 1949, wedding and later divorced as planned.

Palme joined the Social Democratic Party in 1950 and took a Bachelor of Law degree at the University of Stockholm.

Palme left the Social Democrats to victory in September, 1985, in a call to battle over preservation of Sweden’s social welfare programs. His Socialists won 159 seats and their Communist allies gained 19 for a total of 178 seats to 171 for the Conservative Party and the non-socialist coalition partners.

“We’ve won the victory for the welfare state,” Palme said.

Besides his second wife, Lisbeth, whom he married in 1956, he is survived by the couple’s three grown sons.