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Khartoum/Amman: Sudan's trade ministry yesterday declared a national boycott of Danish produce on the orders of President Omar Al Bashir in protest at the reprinting of a cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).
The boycott was effective immediately, said the state minister for foreign trade, Al Samih Siddiq, and the customs authorities have ordered importers not to buy further Danish products.
Local media said the action would affect about 60 Danish imports available in Sudan, largely dairy products, although the volume of trade was not known.
Various groups and organisations — mostly close to the government — have called for a massive demonstration against Denmark in Khartoum tomorrow.
In Amman, dozens of Jordanian Islamists burned the Danish flag vowing "revenge against Crusaders who attack the symbol of Islam".
The Islamic Action Front, Jordan's main licensed opposition party and the political offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, demanded the government expel the Danish envoy until his government offered an official apology.
"Oh government, expel the Danish ambassador: Oh Dane... listen, the Prophet is the symbol of our Islam. We will die for his sake and eradicate anyone who humiliates him," chanted angry protesters in the noisy sit-in near the Danish consulate in the capital Amman.
The Islamists also urged Jordanians to boycott Danish products, saying reprinting the drawings was a deliberate insult and part of "the crusade by the West against Islam".
Warning
The cartoon controversy returned this month after Denmark's five major daily newspapers republished one of 12 drawings of the Prophet that angered Muslims around the world two years ago.
The newspapers said they did so to protest a plot to murder one of the cartoonists who originally published the drawings.
Shaikh Hamza Mansour, a leading Islamist deputy in parliament, warned the repeated republication of the cartoons on "such a scale despite the past reaction would only stoke the fire of fanaticism, deepen hatreds and showed lack of respect by the West towards Muslims". There have been protests or warnings to Denmark because of the new drawings in several countries, including Egypt, Iran, and in the Palestinian territories.
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