Carl Bildt seeks new forms for maintaining bilateral contacts.

Sweden’s government will open ten embassies and shut down six in a move to find a new way of maintaining bilateral contacts in the future.

"We want to be where we make the best possible use of the money that a Swedish presence costs. It is positive that we can use our resources to strengthen Sweden's presence in a number of nearby countries," Minister for Foreign Affairs Carl Bildt said.

Embassies will be closed in Bratislava, Dakar, Dublin, Ljubljana, Luxembourg and Sofia in the course of this year.

At the same time Sweden's presence will be streangthend in the Caucasus and the Balkans by upgrading to embassies the present section offices in Pristina (Kosovo), Tbilisi (Georgia), Chisinau (Moldova) and Tirana (Albania).

Presence will alos be upgraded in West Africa; Bamako (Mali), Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) and Monrovia (Liberia) and in Kigali (Rwanda), La Paz (Bolivia) and Phnom Penh (Cambodia).

"Upgrading section offices to embassies is part of the process of supporting the implementation of Swedish-financed development assistance contributions in countries with which we conduct long-term development cooperation. A stronger presence on the spot is tremendously important for implementing effective, high quality and results-based development cooperation," says Minister for International Development Cooperation Gunilla Carlsson.

In July the government decided to close its Embassy in Colombo and the Consulates-General in Kaliningrad, Canton, Los Angeles and New York.