"Closer to home"

By JAN M. OLSEN, The Associated Press



COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Its embassies are ablaze, its boycotted industries are losing millions of dollars a day — and Denmark is reeling with dismay.



A nation that prides itself on extensive humanitarian work, and usually gets only cursory media attention, suddenly finds itself denounced as evil. In the furor over publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, Danes are groping for ways to cool the anger and are reassessing their self-image.

"Like many other young people, I traveled the world with a Danish flag on my rucksack," said Villy Soevndal, who leads the opposition Socialist People's Party. "It opened doors because Denmark was known as a country that respected others, helped other countries."

"This is scary," Lea Steen, 28, a student, said of TV footage of shrieking protesters throughout the Muslim world burning Danish flags and setting the Danish embassies in Damascus and Beirut on fire. "We've seen it with U.S. or Israeli flags before, but it suddenly got a lot closer to our daily lives."