For Danish Firms, Boycott in Mideast a 'Nightmare'

Those arguments carry little weight in places such as the al-Qiswani Supermarket in the West Bank town of Beit Hanina, where prominently displayed posters urge shoppers, "If you love the Prophet, join us in boycotting Danish products." The posters are surrounded by photos of Danish cheeses, powdered milk, chocolates and other products to be avoided.

The store's owner, Abed Qiswani, 42, said his revenue has dropped 5 percent because of the boycott, which he said has been uniformly followed. He used to sell a carton of Danish cheese a week, but now those products are being left untouched, along with products from some other European countries, including French cheeses and Scandinavian cereals.

Qiswani said that when he tried to return his back stock of Danish products, his supplier told him he had lost nearly $200,000 in canceled orders as a result of the boycott in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

"What has struck me most, though, is that little children come to the store and ask if this is a Danish product," Qiswani said. "Boycotting is a very good thing. Politics is always connected to the economy. The problem these European countries have now is with the Islamic giant, and they should think about who they mess with."

Tariq Maslanani, 11, said he no longer buys French-made Laughing Cow cheese, his favorite, because a French newspaper also ran the cartoons.

"We cannot bear anybody cursing our prophet," said the sixth-grader.

Svend Roed Nielsen, head of trade policy at the Danish Foreign Ministry, said that in addition to daily consumer goods such as cheese and butter, there has been a noticeable drop in exports of pharmaceuticals and medicines to Muslim countries. He said that he was unsure of the exact loss but that those goods accounted for about $104 million in the first 10 months of last year. He said officials had heard that the expected signings of several contracts for Danish machinery and electronic goods had been postponed.

"Things are looking quite bad at the moment," said Keld Winther Rasmussen of the Danish Dairy Board. "We have products in the country we can't sell, in ships that we can't deliver, and products in dairy plants that we will have to find other markets for."

Rasmussen said dairy industry officials had hoped that Prime Minister Rasmussen's televised comments offering regrets for the offense caused to Muslims would improve the situation. "But so far that has had no impact," he said, adding that he hoped that Danish dairy exports to the Middle East would eventually restart. "We hope this is not the end. But we can see that it is going to take a very long time to regain our hold in the market. It could take years."

Bjarne Kristiansen, manager of a dairy in Aalborg, said exports to the Middle East account for 70 percent of his company's sales -- and that market has completely dried up since the boycott took hold. He said his company is losing sales of about 100 tons of feta cheese a week.

"If this continues, after two or three weeks we might have to stop production of feta cheese, which is our main production," he said. "Hopefully we won't have to close completely, but I don't know. It is a terrible situation."

Keld Pedersen, managing director of Nordex Food, said his company has lost 20 percent of its total sales, which normally go to the Middle East. He said the company has had to cut 15 jobs out of its workforce of 200.