Denmark condemns right-wing party

COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- The radical Danish People's Party (DPP) has sparked political uproar in Copenhagen after naming about 4,700 immigrants recently granted Danish citizenship.

The party took out a full-page advert in Jyllands-Posten, the country's leading national broadsheet newspaper, in a bid to show the people of Denmark "who these new Danes were."

"These people are not Europeans or Americans, they are people from outside," said DPP leader Pia Kjaersgaard.

The leader of the Socialist Peoples Party, Holger K. Nielsen, said the advert showed the DPP had no real political message to deliver.

Both the ruling Social Democratic Party and the Conservative and Liberal parties called the advert "distasteful."

On Danish television, politician Arne Melchior described it as "illegal," prompting several Danish immigration organisations to investigate pressing charges against the party.

But Jesper Moller-Andersen, professor of law at the Roskilde School of Business, told local radio the advert is not in fact illegal in Denmark.

The law prevents the use of people's names without their consent only when they are used to sell or advertise a product. It does not apply to political parties, Moller-Andersen said.

The move has sparked widespread reaction among the Danish population.

Hans Christian Viemose has launched an Internet site in support of the "new Danes."

Viemose says it will take just 4,743 people to donate 50 kronor (about 7 US cents) to publish an advert the same size as the first welcoming the "new Danes" into the community.

Any surplus will be donated to the Danish Refugee Council, he told the newspaper Jyllands-Posten.