President of Iceland Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson was interviewed by a reporter from Doha-based TV station Al Jazeera during his official visit to Qatar last week. The 30-minute interview will be aired on Saturday.
“They’re not really easy-going at that TV station,” presidential secretary Örnólfur Thorsson, who accompanied Grímsson on his trip, told Fréttabladid. “They didn’t play polite; they asked him difficult questions straight away.”
The reporter asked Grímsson about the controversial cartoons of Profit Mohammed published in Danish newspaper Jyllandsposten and the protests that followed. According to Fréttabladid, the president said jokes like that are part of Western culture and that he had often been made fun of himself.
Grímsson was also questioned about climate change, Iceland’s candidacy for a seat on the UN Security Council, the situation of Israel and Palestine and cooperation between small states.
