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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Denmark reopens Embassy in Syria after cartoon protests |
| 2006-04-13 |
| STOCKHOLM, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Denmark reopened its embassy in Syria on Wednesday more than two months after it was set ablaze by demonstrators protesting the publishing of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, reports reaching here Wednesday said. The Danish foreign ministry said in a statement on its website that the Damascus mission was now open to the public but called for maintaining vigilance in light of a number of recent incidents and threats that might be actualized against western nations. On Feb. 4, several thousand Syrian demonstrators set the Danish and the Norwegian embassies on fire in violent protest over 12 caricatures of the Prophet first published by Danish Daily Jylland-Posten in September. The fire badly damaged the building that housed the Danish mission but no one was hurt as the embassy was closed. The cartoons, which are considered blasphemous by most Muslims, were reprinted in some other European papers, and provoked an outrage in the Muslim world and a boycott of Danish products in most Muslim countries. A boycott of Danish goods by millions of Muslims has caused an 85 percent drop in Denmark's dairy exports in the wake of the Prophet Mohammad cartoon row. The National Statistics Office said exports of dairy products such as milk, butter and cheese dropped to about 130 million Danish crowns (34.67 million U.S. dollars) in February from 840 million in the same month last year. "The numbers makes it possible to evaluate the consequences of the boycott from Muslim nations on Danish goods for the first time," said Nykredit Markets senior economist Jakob Jakobsen. He estimated the refusal to buy Danish products would cost at least 1.5 billion crowns in dairy exports, or about 10 percent of estimated total sales, this year. |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #1 Why? Do the Danes really want to expedite the processing of more Syrian immigrant applications? |
| Posted by: ed 2006-04-13 08:56 |