DENMARK: Denmark has summoned its ambassadors back from abroad to Copenhagen for talks today about the controversial newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that have triggered protests in the Arab world and threats by militant Muslims.
Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the issue had gone beyond a feud between Copenhagen and the Muslim world and now centred on western free speech versus taboos in Islam (the second religion in many European countries).
In an interview with Dubai-based al-Arabiya television, Mr Rasmussen said he and the Danish people could not be held responsible for what the press published but all parties should avoid escalating the row.
"I have sent a very strong appeal to everyone in Denmark that, though this dispute may raise many strong feelings, everybody should take the responsibility to ensure peaceful co-operation in Denmark," he said.
Reflecting widespread anger in the Muslim world, in Ankara, Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as saying that the cartoons showed press freedom should have its limits. His comments are likely to cause disquiet in European capitals where opposition on human rights grounds to Turkish accession to the EU is already strong.
Turkey's Christian leaders also condemned the cartoons which were originally published by a Danish paper last September. One of them depicts the Prophet with a bomb wrapped in his turban. Many Muslims consider any images of Muhammad to be blasphemous.
Middle Eastern countries have also reacted furiously to the drawings, which were republished this week in at least eight European papers. Syria and Saudi Arabia have recalled their envoys from Denmark and anti-Danish protests have erupted.
About a dozen Palestinian gunmen surrounded European Union offices in the Gaza Strip demanding an apology.
The website of London-based Arabic newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi said it had received a statement from the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades threatening Denmark with a "bloody war".
Meanwhile, the European trade commissioner Peter Mandelson condemned European newspapers which reprinted the cartoons. He warned that the papers were "throwing petrol on to the flames", saying papers were being "provocative" and that they should have thought twice about republishing the images which are considered blasphemous by Muslims.
"I regard them as pretty crude and pretty juvenile and I think, in cases of such cartoons, they are almost bound to cause offence.
"I can understand the motivation at one level of these newspapers. They are, as they would see it, standing up for freedom of speech. What they also have to understand though is the offence that is caused by publishing cartoons of this nature."
Afghanistan condemned the publication of the caricatures, and about 400 Islamic school students set fire to French and Danish flags in protest in the city of Multan in central Pakistan.
Le Temps in Geneva and Budapest's Magyar Hirlap ran another offending cartoon showing an imam telling suicide bombers to stop because heaven had run out of virgins to reward them.
Several European publications, such as Spain's ABC newspaper and Periodico de Catalunya, showed photographs of papers which had published the cartoons. Other European dailies, including France's Le Monde, printed cartoons mocking the row.
Saudi interior minister Prince Nayef said Riyadh considered the cartoons an insult to Muhammad and all Muslims. "We hope that religious centres like the Vatican will clarify their opinion in this respect," he said.
In Beirut, the leader of Lebanon's Shia Hizbollah said the row would never had occurred if a 17-year-old death edict against British writer Salman Rushdie been carried out. "Muslims should display firm reaction to such disgraceful acts," state television quoted Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying in a telephone conversation with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak said freedom of the press, cited by European media and politicians, should not be an excuse for insulting religions.
Many Arab commentators said the European defence rang hollow because European media protected Judaism and Israel from criticism.
Some Muslims saw the cartoons as deliberate provocation.
"It's no longer a matter of freedom of thought or opinion or belief. It's a plot hatched against Islam and Muslims, the preparation of which began many years ago," former editor Samir Ragab wrote in the Egyptian state daily el-Gomhuria.
"They promote their hatred under the pretext of freedom of expression and turn a blind eye to the crimes that are committed in the name of Christianity and more dangerously Judaism," said columnist Mohammad Kharoub in the Jordanian daily al-Rai.
But some liberal commentators questioned the wisdom of pressing an issue they saw as secondary. "This active movement against the insults to the Prophet has been absent on many other issues which are no less important," Saad Hagras wrote in Egypt's Nadhet Misr.
"It is discouraging that the collective energy of the Muslim world is consumed punishing a small European country over a drawing, while US military bases infest the heart of the Arab world," Palestinian-American Ramzy Baroud said in Egypt's English-language al-Ahram Weekly.
As'ad AbuKhalil, a Lebanese-born academic based in California, said Arab governments were inciting the campaign "to channel the political anger of their citizens". "They would not dare to lead a campaign against Israel, so let them bash Denmark and Norway," he said. - (Reuters)