OSLO, January 5, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Norwegian Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen reiterated on Thursday, January 5, support for boycotting Israeli products in a show of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

"I have not bought Israeli products for a long time and naturally I support my party's campaign for a boycott of goods and services from Israel," the minister told the daily Dagbladet.

Halvorsen's party, the Socialist Left, is a junior member of the three-party left-wing ruling coalition.

The Socialist Left joined several organizations last year in a pro-Palestinian campaign called "Boycott Israel", aimed at denouncing "Israel's scandalous policy towards the Palestinians which violates human rights".

Last month, the Wiesenthal Centre, an international Jewish organization, protested a decision by the Soer-Troendelag region of western Norway to join the boycott.

Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, of the Labour Party, stressed, however, that a boycott of Israeli products was not an official government policy.

"That's not the government's policy," he told the public radio NRK.

He also ruled out as "completely unthinkable" the possibility of the government implementing such a boycott of Israeli good.

Halvorsen, for her part, said the government "has to accept that there are different views within the political parties on the measures to use against Israel."

She went on: "We want to use more vigorous methods than others within the government".

The Presbyterian Church USA has threatened to divest from five American giant companies, accusing them of supporting and helping maintain the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

The New York Times reported on Friday, August 5, that the Episcopal Church USA and the United Church of Christ were considering divestment as a means of swaying Israeli policy.

The World Council of Churches, the main global body uniting non-Catholic Christians, encouraged in February members to sell off investments in companies profiting from Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In October 2002, 18 of the 22-member Arab League vowed to "reactivate" a half-century-old ban on trade with Israel as they wrapped up a meeting of the League’s Boycott Office of Israel (BOI).

Arab states once boycotted not just Israeli firms themselves, but third-country companies which do business with Israel.

However, the indirect boycott has largely lapsed since the launch of the Middle East peace process in 1991.

Washington, Israel's main alley, has been laying immense pressures on Arab countries to call off the boycott.

On Tuesday October 11, Bahrain's parliament rejected a decision by the government to lift a ban on Israeli goods as part of a trade deal with the United States.