Around the World: Iran

Dutch envoy summoned

Iran's Foreign Ministry summoned the Dutch ambassador yesterday in protest at an "insulting and anti-Islamic" film by a Dutch lawmaker that accuses the Quran of inciting violence, state media said.

A senior diplomat from Slovenia, which holds the rotating EU presidency, was also called to the ministry in Teheran over the film by Geert Wilders.

Wilders' video, which urges Muslims to tear out "hate-filled" verses from the Quran, has outraged Muslim nations in a similar way to a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad with a bomb under his turban published in a Danish newspaper in 2005.

(China Daily 03/31/2008 page6)