STOCKHOLM The unsolved 1986 murder of Olof Palme is still raising more questions than it is answering.

Theories abound about who was responsible for the killing of the Swedish prime minister, shot dead at close range as he walked home, without bodyguards, late at night on February 28, after going to the cinema with his wife.

One involves Abdullah Ocalan, the Kurdish rebel leader whom Swedish detectives hope to question in his Turkish prison cell. Ocalan denied giving orders to kill Palme after Sweden refused asylum to members of his PKK guerrilla group. He says a Kurdish splinter group may have been responsible.

Others implicate the Israeli secret service Mossad, South Africa's apartheid government, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the Soviet Union, Chile's government under General Augusto Pinochet and an international syndicate of arms traders.

On the home front, murder conspiracies include business leaders allegedly angered by Palme's leftist economic policies, ultra-right white supremacist groups, disgruntled police, a jealous husband and the Freemasons.

One thing is certain: Palme's leftist credentials and his championing of international causes, from the struggle against white rule in South Africa to criticism of the United States in the Vietnam War, earned him many enemies and prompted speculation about foreign plots to assassinate him.

----------- Killing Stunned the Country ---------

Palme's murder "awakened a whole nation from its innocent 'Sleeping Beauty' slumber," wrote art critic Tove Alsterdal in a review of a play and new novel, both of which deal with the Palme era.

Sverker Astrom, a veteran Swedish diplomat who worked closely with Palme and wrote a book with a chapter dedicated to him, told Reuters that the murder had chilled and momentarily united the Swedes, though Palme was too controversial to have ever been regarded as the father of the nation.

"Those who experienced the Palme era, also those who detested his policies, will forever retain the memory of Palme... His brilliance, heat of engagement and polemical prowess," Astrom said his 1992 book "Moments From Half a Century in the Foreign Service."

Between eight and 10 conspiracy theories remain under active investigation, said Agneta Blidberg, deputy director at the Prosecution Service in Stockholm and the sixth public prosecutor assigned to the case.

Blidberg still believes the culprit will be found, although the number of police investigating the case has dwindled to a dozen from more than 300 in the immediate aftermath.

The police, castigated by the media and in a 1999 government commission for bungling the investigation, have received some 20,000 tip-offs.

Under Swedish law, murder charges can be pressed up to 25 years after the event and a case against a suspect reopened if new evidence comes to light that could lead to a conviction.

The murder weapon -- thought to be a 0.357-caliber magnum revolver based on the single armor-piercing bullet which ripped apart Palme's internal organs as he was shot in the back -- has never been found.

A second bullet grazed Palme's wife Lisbet, who in a police lineup identified Christer Pettersson, a petty Swedish criminal, as the gunman.

Pettersson pleaded not guilty, saying he had been alone on a train on his way home at the time of the shooting, but was convicted of the murder in 1989. He was acquitted later that year by an appeals court, which said Lisbet Palme may have been mistaken and her testimony had been inconsistent.

------------- High Profile Political Career --------

Olof Palme was born on January 30, 1927, the son of a middle-class family. He studied law, veered left ideologically and was elected as a Social Democrat member of Parliament in 1958. He became minister of communications in 1965.

He served as prime minister from 1968-76 and 1982-86, raising Sweden's foreign policy profile considerably as a harsh critic of the U.S. role in Vietnam, racial segregation in South Africa and military regimes in many foreign countries.

During his period as opposition leader he caused an uproar by inviting Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat to Sweden.

Palme cherished Sweden's policy of neutrality and military nonalignment and was a vocal supporter of global disarmament.

Anders Hellner, head of the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, recalls Palme's abhorrence of the four "Ks" he saw as defining the European Union, which Sweden joined in 1995 and currently leads as holder of the presidency -- capitalism, conservatism, colonialism and Catholicism (all words begin with the letter k in Swedish).

(Reuter)