Leaders urge calm in cartoon controversy
(China Daily)
Updated: 2006-02-07 06:02

PARIS: World leaders called for calm yesterday after weekend attacks in which Danish diplomatic missions were set ablaze and Lebanon and Syria promised inquiries into how protests about cartoons of the Prophet turned violent.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed alarm about the riots and urged restraint. But oil giant Iran, which is reviewing trade ties with countries that published the cartoons, vowed to respond to "an anti-Islamic and Islamophobic current."

Denmark is the focus of Muslim rage because the images, one showing the Prophet Mohammad with a turban resembling a bomb, first appeared in a Danish daily and the ensuing furore has become a clash between press freedom and religious respect.

In Teheran, a crowd of about 200 people pelted the Austrian Embassy with fire bombs and stones yesterday. They smashed all the diplomatic mission's windows but the building did not catch fire, and dozens of riot police surrounded it and were preventing the protesters from storming inside.

The embassy was attacked over the cartoons and also for the European Union's stance over Iran's nuclear programme, since Vienna currently holds the presidency of the EU.

"I call on all Arab countries to talk with moderation about what is happening," French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said, in a view echoed by other leaders after the riots in Beirut and Damascus. "Let's keep it calm."

Ukraine yesterday became the latest country where newspapers have published the cartoons, joining Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Hungary, New Zealand, Poland and the United States.

There were fresh protests about the cartoons outside the European Union offices in Gaza, Palestine, yesterday.

The presidential guard fired in the air to disperse the demonstrators and anti-riot police secured the area.

For Muslims, depicting the Prophet Mohammad is prohibited by Islam and protests have raged from Lahore to Gaza, but moderate Muslim groups have expressed their fears about radicals and militants hijacking the affair.

"With growing concern, we are witnessing the escalation in disturbing tensions provoked by the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad that Muslims consider deeply offensive," the prime ministers of Turkey and Spain said in the International Herald Tribune.

"We shall all be the losers if we fail to immediately defuse this situation," Tayyip Erdogan and Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said in the joint article.

Lebanon apologized yesterday to Denmark after Muslim demonstrators set fire to the building housing the Danish mission in Beirut the most violent in a growing string of worldwide protests.

Lebanese Interior Minister Hassan al-Sabaa resigned after police used tear gas and water cannon in Beirut to disperse thousands of protesters, some of whom ransacked and burned the Danish consulate.

One protester, among those who set the consulate alight, was encircled by flames and died after jumping from the third floor.

Syrians set fire to the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus on Saturday and damaged the Swedish embassy.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, one of the few US newspapers to publish a cartoon of the Prophet, defended the action on Sunday by saying it was just doing its job.

Editor Amanda Bennett said "when a use of religious imagery that many find offensive becomes a major news story, we believe it is important for readers to be able to judge the content of the image for themselves."

The Danish Foreign Ministry urged Danes on Sunday to leave Lebanon and advised its citizens not to travel there.

Norway said it would complain to the United Nations about Syria's failure to protect its embassy.

(China Daily 02/07/2006 page1)