New claim that apartheid agent killed Palme

STOCKHOLM -- A private investigation into the unsolved murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme in 1986 claims that an agent of South Africa's apartheid government carried out the assassination, news reports said yesterday.

Swedish businessman Kent Ajland says a group of South African private investigators had identified a South African agent now living outside the country as Palme's killer, the Stockholm daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter reported.

Ajland told the newspaper he had received documentation from the South African investigators showing that the agent, who was not named in the press report, was in Stockholm on the night Palme was shot.

Palme was slain by a lone gunman on February 28, 1986, as he and his wife were walking without security along a main street in Stockholm after attending a late evening cinema performance.

Ajland told another Stockholm newspaper, Aftonbladet, that he received a tip-off on the Palme murder from contacts in South Africa during a business trip.

But Lars Nyhlen, head of the special Swedish police task force in charge of the continuing official investigation of the Palme case, was cautious in drawing any conclusion from the latest evidence, saying no new facts had emerged and no arrests were anticipated.

It was not the first time a South African civilian and military security services have come under suspicion in the Palme investigation.

*Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa did not comment yesterday on the allegations, but said "it has always been a generally held belief that the apartheid agents were responsible for the death" of Palme.

Christer Pettersson, a convicted criminal with a history of substance abuse, was identified by Palme's wife as the killer. He was convicted in 1988, but acquitted on appeal after police failed to find the gun used to kill the prime minister.

Although a substantial reward is on offer to find Palme's killer, Ajland said he did not care about the money.

"I want this case to be solved," he said. -- Sapa-AP-DPA