File photo shows Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstroem (R) recieving Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Stockholm on February 10, 2015. PHOTO: AFP
"The explanation we have been given is that Sweden has highlighted the situation for democracy and human rights and that is why they do not want me to speak," Foreign Minister Margot Wallstroem told news agency TT in Cairo.
"It's a shame that a country has blocked my participation."
An Arab diplomat confirmed to AFP that Riyadh had stopped the Swede from making her opening speech.
Wallstroem had been invited as an honorary guest to the Arab ministers' meeting in praise of her government's decision to recognise Palestine in October.
Read: Sweden recognises Palestinian state
Wallstroem has rarely mentioned Saudi Arabia publicly but in January she slammed the kingdom's treatment of blogger Raef Badawi, who had been sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison for insulting Islam.
Read: Saudi blogger lashed in public for 'insulting Islam'
"One must protest against what are nearly mediaeval methods" of punishment, she told TT.
Yet her country has a decade-long arms-trading deal with Riyadh which is due for renewal for another five years in May.
The deal has come under fire within Wallstroem's Social Democrats, while their Green Party coalition partners oppose it categorically.
Wallstroem's "feminist foreign policy" aims to "strengthen gender equality, improve women's access to resources and increase women's representation," she said before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva last week.
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