Bush backs Denmark over Prophet cartoons
(AFP)
Updated: 2006-02-08 09:50

Iranian demonstrators briefly stormed the Danish embassy in Tehran Tuesday and stoned the Norwegian mission. The assaults, the second round in two days, prompted Tehran's authorities to join calls for an end to attacks on European missions, saying they were not in the interests of the Islamic Republic.

Meanwhile, the European Union slammed Iran's decision to suspend trade with Denmark, and said it was studying a response.

In the Pakistani city of Peshawar nearly 3,000 people on Tuesday attended a rally called by the Islamist government of North West Frontier Province, shouting "Hang the cartoonists!"

In Pakistan's remote North Waziristan tribal area bordering Afghanistan, some 5,000 tribesmen and students held a protest march and burnt a Danish flag.

Demonstrators in Dhaka also burned a flag during a protest organised by the Jamaat-e-Islami, the second largest party in Bangladesh's four-party coalition government.

The cartoons were "the straw that broke the camel's back" among Muslims, the Palestinian Authority's envoy to the EU said.

Many Muslims were pushed "to the limit" by the drawings, which had to be seen against an "Islamophobe context," said Leila Shahid.

"If the same story had happened 20 years ago, there would not have been 300 people in the street in the whole world," she told a debate in Brussels. "But we are faced with Islamophobe language worldwide. It is the straw which broke the camel's back," she said.

But German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the controversy might have been exploited to incite unrest in Muslim countries, including Iran.

"In the last few days I have had the impression that in many Arab countries the cartoon controversy is being used as means to rouse emotions," Steinmeier told reporters.

Russian President Vladimir Putin slammed what he called provocations in the worldwide row, calling on editors to "think 100 times" before publishing such pictures.

"I think that any provocation in this area is absolutely unacceptable. Before publishing something, doing something or drawing, you need to think 100 times."

Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik, whose country holds the EU presidency, called for a dialogue with Islamic countries to stop the violence. She asked EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana to meet in Jeddah with the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which groups 57 Islamic countries, to discuss ways to end the tension.

OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu condemned attacks on European embassies.

In a statement, Ihsanoglu expressed "his disapproval over these regrettable and deplorable incidents" and said "overreactions surpassing the limits of peaceful democratic acts... are dangerous and detrimental" to Islam.