Sweden upstaged by Maldives in virtual diplomacy

STOCKHOLM, Sweden: Sweden on Wednesday opened an embassy in the computer-generated world known as Second Life, but it was not the pioneering venture into virtual diplomacy it had expected.

The high-tech Swedes saw themselves trailing the island nation of the Maldives by a week in establishing a diplomatic presence in the popular online community.

"They beat us to the gate," said Olle Wastberg, a former Swedish consul in New York who helped create the Scandinavian country's mission to Second Life.

Second Life is a virtual world in which some 6 million players — called "residents" — interact with each other. They can do basically anything that people can in real life, including buying and selling property, participating in group or individual activities, or socializing.

Sweden announced in January it would set up a virtual presence in the online world to spread information about the Scandinavian country of 9.1 million people and attract more young visitors. But it was the Maldives, with a population of 350,000, that opened the first Second Life embassy on May 22. According to the Maldives' Foreign Minister Ahmed Saeed about 170,000 people in the country have Internet access while there are 19,000 registered broadband users.

"I think it's good that other countries get involved" in Second Life, Wastberg said. "But I saw they had opened theirs on poles in the water so I hope they're not hit by global warming."

The Swedish virtual embassy was inaugurated by Foreign Minister Carl Bildt at the Swedish Institute in Stockholm. Seated in front of a computer, Bildt had some difficulty guiding his scissor-wielding online character to the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

"There's a question of finding the place," Bildt said, as he crashed the cyber version of himself into a tree.

The online embassy was modeled after the House of Sweden in Washington, D.C., and set in an environment resembling the Stockholm archipelago.

It provides visitors with information about Swedish culture and history, as well as tips about places to visit and visa rules. It will also host exhibits, including a virtual version of the Budapest office of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who helped thousands of Jews escape Nazi-occupied Hungary during World War II.

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