04 February 2004 :
Sweden's Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds told Swedish Radio that Vietnam would try to abolish the death penalty within 10 years but had problems convincing the public that capital punishment was not needed. Freivalds, who was accompanying Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia on a five-day official visit to Vietnam, said she was informed about the Vietnamese ambition by the country's foreign minister, Dy Nien Nguyen.(Sources: Radio Sweden via BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific, 04/02/2004)
