Haaretz
Tevet 12, 5766
OSLO - Norway's prime minister
rejected yesterday calls for a boycott of Israeli imports by a party in
his cabinet that has highlighted policy strains in the center-left
coalition.
"This government opposes a consumer boycott of Israel,"
Jens Stoltenberg told parliament, turning down opposition calls for a
formal vote denouncing a consumer boycott launched last week by the
Socialist Left Party.
Stoltenberg came to power in October at the
head of a three-party coalition of his Labor Party, the Center Party, and
the Socialist Left, which has not been in government before.
Norway
hosted secret talks in 1993 that led to the now-stranded Oslo Accords, and
the boycott call has raised government worries that Israel will no longer
view Norway as being even-handed.
Finance Minister Kristin
Halvorsen, head of the Socialist Left Party, apologized last week after
saying she favored the boycott, aimed at increasing pressure on Israel to
allow an independent Palestinian state.
She said a boycott of
Israeli oranges and other goods was not government policy, merely that of
her party.
"It is quite normal that parties have policies that do
not win through in the government platform," Stoltenberg said of fractured
Norwegian politics, where his Labor Party is the largest, with 61 seats in
the 169-member parliament.
A boycott of Israeli goods like oranges
would be symbolic - Norway's imports totaled 8.22 million euros in 2005.
Still, Norway's Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere has written both to the
United States and Israel to restate Oslo's policies.