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Protesters torch Danish mission in Beirut
(AP)
Updated: 2006-02-06 06:52
Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said before meeting with top Islamic leaders that
about 200 people were detained, and police said they included 76 Syrians, 35
Palestinians and 38 Lebanese.
The first apparent victim of the political fallout from the violence was
Interior Minister Hassan Sabei, who submitted his resignation during an
emergency Cabinet meeting chaired by President Emile Lahoud. It was not
immediately clear if the resignation was accepted.
Sabei said authorities had done their best to prevent what was supposed to be
a peaceful protest from turning violent.
"Things got out of hand when elements that had infiltrated into the ranks of
the demonstrators broke through security shields," he said. "The one remaining
option was an order to shoot, but I was not prepared to order the troops to
shoot Lebanese citizens."
Sabei, like other Lebanese politicians and Grand Mufti Mohammed Rashid
Kabbani, spiritual leader of Lebanon's Sunni Muslims, suggested Islamic radicals
had fanned the anger of the crowds.
Kabbani said outsiders among the protesters were trying to "harm the
stability of Lebanon" and "distort the image of Islam."
The United States accused the Syrian government of backing the protests in
Lebanon and Syria.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a statement that the resentment
over the caricatures "cannot justify violence, least of all when directed at
people who have no responsibility for, or control over, the publications in
question."
The Danish Foreign Ministry urged Danes to leave Lebanon quickly. The
violence Saturday in Damascus prompted a similar warning.
"The government has no intention to insult Muslims," Danish Foreign Minister
Per Stig Moeller said on public radio in Copenhagen. "We are trying to explain
to everyone that enough is enough."
The Syrian state-run daily newspaper Al-Thawra said Denmark was to blame
because its government had not apologized for the September publication of the
caricatures in the Jyllands-Posten.
The drawings — including one depicting the prophet wearing a turban shaped as
a bomb with a burning fuse — have since been republished in several European and
New Zealand newspapers as a statement on behalf of a free press.
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