Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay my respects to the family of Anna Lindh, the late Swedish Foreign Affairs Minister who died last week in Stockholm.
I had the great pleasure of meeting Ms. Lindh when I attended a European Union Conflict Prevention Conference in Helsinborg, Sweden, in my capacity as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
I was very impressed with Anna Lindh, the woman and the politician. There was every chance she may have become the future prime minister of Sweden. Her death has left a void which will take a long time to fill.
I held her in high regard and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to meet and work with her on that one occasion. She was a prominent campaigner for human rights and European integration, and was a politician with enormous conviction.
My condolences go out to her husband, her two children and her fellow countrymen. As Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson said: “Sweden has lost its face to the world”.