The newspaper talked to several anonymous sources and they believe that the relationship between the former U.S. president and Jens Stoltenberg was destroyed during a telephone conversation in 2005 and Bush said the Norwegian Prime Minister gave false information about the content of their conversation.
When Stoltenberg took over the prime ministry from Kjell Magne Bondevik in 2005, Bush called to congratulate him shortly after the general election. Afterwards, Stoltenberg was interviewed by the press about the conversation. During the interview he suggested that he had told the U.S. president Norway would withdraw the last troops in Iraq. Labor and the Socialist Party in the election campaign had promised to pull troops out of Iraq.
When the American president saw Stoltenberg's statement, he got furious, writes Aftenposten. The American authorities denied everything Stoltenberg had told about the troops in Iraq is fabricated. According to U.S. sources referred by Aftenposten, this should have led to Stoltenberg to be “blacklisted”.
