INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Norway's coalition government is close to collapse after the anti-immigrant party propping it up said it will pull out over an Islamic State
(IS) bride's repatriation from Syria.The Progress Party's leader, who is also Norway's finance minister, will resign from the government and
remove her party from the four-party coalition, robbing the prime minister of her parliamentary majority.Siv Jensen made good on her threat
to leave the government after a 29-year-old Norwegian-Pakistani woman arrived in Norway on Saturday with her son, five, and daughter,
three.Image:Populist Party leader Siv Jensen (L) has threatened to leave the coalition with prime minister Erna Solberg (R)She is believed
to have travelled to Syria in 2013 and married a Norwegian-Chilean IS fighter called Bastian Vasquez, who is believed to have died, before
she married another fighter."I brought us into government, and I'm now bringing the party out," Ms Jensen told a news conference on Monday
afternoon.The decision to bring the IS bride back to Norway, accompanied by police, was made on "humanitarian grounds" over fears one of her
children is seriously ill, minister of foreign affairs Ine Eriksen Soreide said.The mother, who has not been named, was arrested on arrival
for "participation in a terrorist organisation" and taken with her children to hospital.But the Progress Party, Norway's third largest,
believe she used her child to get her out of the Al Hol camp in northeastern Syria where she has been held since March 2019 with thousands
of other women and children.The mother had refused to let the sick child travel alone to Norway."Many believe she used her child as a shield
to come back to Norway," said Ms Jensen
"There are many in Norway who are displeased by this, not just in the Progress Party."Image:About 74,000 women and children linked to
Islamic State are held in the Al Hol campShe said she did not feel her party was consulted in the woman's repatriation decision and she
faced pressure from local Progress Party leaders to take a stand and pull the party out of the delicate coalition.Her party had offered to
help the children but does not want to provide any government assistance for adults seeking to return home after joining Islamist groups
abroad or marrying foreign fighters.Despite losing her majority, prime minister Erna Solberg, head of the Conservative Party and nicknamed
Iron Erna after Margaret Thatcher, is expected to remain in office as head of a minority coalition.Speaking ahead of the Progress Party's
decision to pull out, the prime minister said: "A majority in the government believed that the concern for the child was paramount."A court
hearing to determine the condition and length of the woman's custody is happening on Monday.Under Norwegian law she faces up to six years in
prison for participating in a terrorist organisation.Ms Solberg's Conservatives entered into a coalition with the Progress Party as a
minority government in 2013 before the Liberal Party joined them in 2018 and the Christian Democratic Party joined in 2019.The government
risked collapse in 2018 after opposition parties said they would not support a no-confidence motion in then-justice minister Sylvi Listhaug
who accused the the centre-left Labour opposition party of believing "terrorists' rights are more important than the nation's
security".Labour and its youth organisation were the main targets of Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people with a bomb in Oslo and a shooting
attack on a youth camp on the island of Utoya in 2011.The justice minister resigned, averting the government's collapse.
