08 February 2006

The European Union were in contact with Arab and Muslim leaders Tuesday in an attempt to contain an escalation of protests against caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad, as for four demonstrators were killed during an attack on NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Nine people have been killed since protests against the images erupted worldwide, seven in Afghanistan, and one each in Somalia and Lebanon.

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said his country was doing its utmost to resolve the row.

"Denmark is doing everything it can to have a positive and constructive dialogue with a series of governments in the Middle East," Rasmussen said.

Rasmussen called for "calm and reason, because this is a serious situation and it is essential in this case for all of us to remain calm."

He said that U.S. President George W. Bush had called him to give his backing.

"President Bush called me on the telephone to express his support and reiterated the support already received from the U.S., which we very much appreciate," Rasmussen told a news conference in Copenhagen.

The European Parliament issued a joint appeal with the parliaments of 10 Mediterranean partner countries calling for an end to violence and a return to calm and dialogue.

European Parliament President Josep Borrell said he personally found some of the cartoons offensive and insulting, but that could not justify violence or incitement to violence.

He said he will visit Morocco at the weekend to attend a series of events aimed at promoting interfaith understanding.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana was in touch with the main international organizations in the Muslim world - the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council - to urge them to help restore calm and might also travel to the region, an official said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki called his Danish counterpart, Per Stig Moeller, and urged Copenhagen and other EU governments to "compensate for their mistake" in publishing the drawings.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the West's publication of the prophet pictures was an Israeli conspiracy motivated by anger over the victory of the militant Hamas group in the Palestinian elections last month.

"The West condemns any denial of the Jewish holocaust, but it permits the insult of Islamic sanctities," Khamenei said.

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

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

Austrian far-right leader Joerg Haider said that Austria should ask Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to help mediate the crisis.

Gadhafi is an influential and respected figure in the Arab world and wants to "build bridges with the West," said Haider, who has visited the Libyan leader several times.

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

Further protests erupted on Tuesday in Yemen, Djibouti, Gaza, Nigeria and Azerbaijan, while Croatia became the latest country where a newspaper printed the cartoons.

The Afghan protestors were killed Tuesday when some 700 demonstrators attacked Norwegian NATO troops in the northwestern town of Maymana, lobbing grenades into their compound. Three Afghan protesters were killed Monday.

Several hundred demonstrators took to the streets of Bethlehem calling for Denmark to apologize and set fire to Danish and U.S. flags in Manger Square.

Thousands of Egyptians and Jordanians also demonstrated peacefully, calling for a boycott of Danish products and the cutting of ties with Copenhagen. About 10,000 people, mostly students, joined demonstrations at universities in Cairo.

At least 10,000 people marched in the Bangladeshi capital and tens of thousands turned out in Niger's capital Niamey to vent their anger about the cartoons.

The cartoons have appeared in papers in Australia, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Fiji, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, United States, Ukraine and Yemen.

In Tehran, demonstrators throwing firebombs briefly stormed into the Danish Embassy for a second consecutive day, with 20 to 30 protestors scaling the compound walls and another 300 outside hurling stones and Molotov cocktails.

Later, around 100 demonstrators gathered outside the Norwegian Embassy in Tehran, throwing stones at it.

The Tehran authorities had asked their citizens not to attack embassies, after the second assault on the Danish mission, the state news agency IRNA reported.

The authorities "have told the Iranian people not to attack diplomatic territory," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said on state television. "Nevertheless, Western countries should atone for their mistake." - Agencies