Norwegian anti-abortion activists hinted Thursday that they were involved in stealing Edvard Munch's masterpiece, The Scream, and asserted that the famous painting would be returned if state television shows a controversial film that depicts abortion as murder. Borre Knudsen, a former Lutheran minister known for his theatrical protests against Scandinavia's liberal abortion laws, said the painting "might surface again" if Norwegian state television would broadcast The Silent Scream, which shows a fetus being sucked from a womb in an abortion. A spokesman for Norwegian television said no demand to show the film has been received by the network. He said it is "out of the question" to run the film under those conditions even if such a request were made. Knudsen has been a leading crusader among a small but vocal minority fighting to overturn Norway's abortion laws. Women here are permitted to have abortions on demand, paid for by the state, until the 12th week of pregnancy. Knudsen cautiously refrained from claiming responsibility for the theft or saying he had direct knowledge of who might have committed the crime. Police said they were studying his comments but that for the moment they had not found any reason to call him in for questioning about the theft. "We simply can't be too open about this," Knudsen said in a radio interview. "We have sent a signal, and we want this signal to be understood, but we must be very secretive about it." Asked whether he would be willing to steal the painting in order to publicize his anti-abortion campaign, Knudsen responded, "Yes, absolutely." But when pressed by the interviewer to say whether he or his supporters were involved in the theft, he replied, "No comment." The painting, which shows the ghostly outline of a woman with a terrified expression standing on a bridge with her hands clutching her face, is perhaps the most renowned work by Norway's greatest artist. The haunting image by Munch (pronounced MUNK) has become an emblem here in anti-abortion literature. Thieves stole the painting from Oslo's National Gallery on Saturday, the same day as the opening ceremony of the Lillehammer Winter Olympics. A man and an accomplice climbed a ladder and smashed a window, then grabbed the 1893 painting and fled before police arrived. The theft took less than a minute and was recorded by security video cameras. Two days earlier, a local radio station received an anonymous fax that portrayed a woman's fist clutching a screaming fetus. A faint reproduction of The Scream could be discerned in the background. "Which is of greater value: a child or a painting?" the message asked. The same day, Norwegian police refused to allow 12 American anti-abortion activists into the country on the grounds that they were "suspected of planning to commit criminal offenses," said Petter Parnemann, assistant police chief. "We seized certain items that strengthened our suspicions," he said, but he would not elaborate. Knudsen invited the Americans to Norway for the Olympics to help dramatize their anti-abortion cause in the presence of an estimated 2,000 journalists from around the world gathered here for the games. Knudsen and Ludvig Nessa, another former minister, were defrocked by the state Lutheran Church because they refused to carry out their clerical obligations as a protest against Norway's abortion laws. Leif Lier, the police superintendent in charge of investigating the theft of the painting, said he has no plans to interrogate Knudsen or Nessa because there is no solid evidence implicating them in the crime. He said Knudsen "expressed interesting views, but I noted that he gave no clear answer to any of the questions that he was asked." Lier said he would proceed with his investigation.