COPENHAGEN (AFP) - Members of Denmark's governing coalition called Tuesday for observers to be sent to Sweden ahead of its September 19 elections after two private broadcasters rejected ads from a far-right party.

• Sweden's far-right furious: 'Democracy in danger'
• Swedish TV station refuses to air 'hateful' ad

Sweden's TV4 announced last Friday that it would not air the Sweden Democrats' campaign advertisements because it could breach legislation prohibiting messages containing hate grounded on race and religion.

A private radio station barred an audio version of the same ad on Monday.

"It would be appropriate to send observers to the Swedish elections," said Michael Aastrup Jensen, foreign affairs spokesman of the centre-right Liberal Party, in comments reported by the Jyllands-Posten newspaper.

Naser Khader, spokesman for the Conservative Party, told the same paper that it was necessary "to tell Swedes that censorship does not have its place in a Scandinavian country in 2010."

Pia Kjaersgaard, leader of Denmark's far-right Danish People's Party, which formally supports the ruling coalition in parliament, agreed, saying Council of Europe election observers should be sent to Sweden.

"You would think it's a banana republic," she told Denmark's TV2 News. "What is happening in Sweden is grotesque and has nothing to do with democracy."

Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen told reporters it was not his role to interfere in Swedish elections.

"An OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) mission has visited Sweden and expressed its total confidence in the electoral system, and I share that confidence," he said.

Sweden's Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said his country had a long democratic tradition and had no need for election observers.

"For those following the Swedish election, it is perfectly obvious that there is room for the parliamentary parties as well as those trying to get into parliament to express their points of view," he told Swedish news agency TT.

Swedish opposition leader Mona Sahlin, of the Social Democrats, said the Danish proposal was "not serious."

"We have a fully democratic election here in Sweden," she told TT, adding she supported TV4's decision to bar the Sweden Democrats' advert.

"The difference between freedom of speech and inciting to hatred against an ethnic group must be understood. What I saw in their attempt at a TV ad was incitement to hatred against an ethnic group," she said.