Danish defense minister quits over scandal

Denmark’s defense minister has resigned over controversy surrounding the leaking of top secret military information to the media.

“My political room for maneuver has narrowed and I can’t live with that as a minister,” Soren Gade said in a statement late on Monday.

The top official’s resignation comes in the wake of a scandal involving the 2007 leaking of classified information about Danish elite troops in Iraq.

Last month Gade’s spokesman Jacob Winther was accused by a journalist of disclosing the information.

The military has said the published information endangered the lives of the Danish soldiers.

This is however not the last time that secret military facts have been unveiled in Denmark.

In a similar event last year, Denmark’s military chief of staff was forced to resign after it emerged that the military’s IT service chief translated a book the army wanted to ban into Arabic and leaked it to the press.

The controversial book, titled ‘Ranger – At War with the Elite’, was written by former Special Forces soldier, Thomas Rathsack and gives an eye witness account of Danish operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Gade has been heavily criticized by the opposition and the media for his handling of both issues.

“One doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that I have been substantially weakened in the past six months,” Jyllands-Posten quoted Gade as saying.

The recent development comes as Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen plans a reshuffle of his government.

According to TV2 News, Business Minister Lene Espersen would replace Per Stig Moller as foreign minister, while Gitte Lillelund Bech would replace Gade.