that they did so. At a press conference on 15 November, together with prime minister Erna Solberg, they both thanked Lithuania for their participation in the release of Frode Berg. Søreide confirmed that their efforts had gone to work with other countries as well before settling on Lithuania. She stated: "We discovered while working on the various tracks, that this was the most fruitful, and eventually that it was the only possible track". She went on to say: "It became clear that this exchange was a solution that all parties could accept". In January 2020, the news came that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Government decided in the autumn of 2019 to bring home a Norwegian, a presumably terminally ill boy. The case was controversial because both the sister and the mother were accused of terrorism and was also brought back to Norway. This was an alternative no one wanted, the government had said they would bring the Norwegian children home if requested, but in this case it was not possible. In the end, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the majority of the government made the decision to bring them home, which triggered an assessment in the Progress Party's national board about the party's government participation, where they concluded to withdraw from the government. Søreide stated that the decision was made on humanitarian grounds and knowledge that was the basis for an assumed sick child. In August, Søreide's spokeswoman, Trude Maaseide, said that an unnamed Russian diplomat working at the trade section of the Russian embassy in Oslo was expelled for linking to the case of a man jailed on the accusation of spying for Russia. It appeared the expelled diplomat was the Russian intelligence officer that Norwegian authorities said was meeting with the suspected spy (a Norwegian citizen) in an Oslo restaurant when he was arrested. Søreide hailed the peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates as a positive development and said Norway welcomed any move that led toward peace in the Middle East. Søreide supported the EU's condemnation and sanctions following the attempted poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, saying "Norway has condemned the attack on Alexei Navalny. Analyzes by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and independent tests in Germany, Sweden and France have confirmed that Navalny was poisoned with the military nerve agent Novichok". She further stressed that