Cartoon anger rages on
2006-02-07 07:55
Tehran - Angry protests over cartoons portraying the Prophet Muhammad continued in the Muslim world on Monday with hundreds of demonstrators attacking two European embassies in Iran and the regime halting trade with Denmark.
Governments and international bodies called for calm and compromise and from Brussels to Moscow to Washington leaders sought an elusive balance between mollifying Muslims outraged by irreverent caricatures of Islam's prophet and upholding the principles of free speech.
In the public arena, however, passions remained dangerously inflamed, with worldwide demonstrations against the cartoons causing at least five deaths and dozens of injuries and arrests.
The White House said it understood Islamic anger but added that Muslims must also condemn anti-Semitic and anti-Christian "hate speech."
Embassies torched
"We understand fully why people, why Muslims, find the cartoons offensive," spokesperson Scott McClellan said, while upholding "the right of people to express their views, and freedom of speech in society."
After a weekend that saw Denmark's embassies torched in Lebanon and Syria, fury over the images continued to spread, with protests held across Afghanistan as well as in Egypt, Indian-held Kashmir, Indonesia, Iran, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and Thailand.
Protests came from Algeria and Nigeria and a Danish aid group was forced to halt activities in the stricken Darfur region of Sudan.
Syria rejected Denmark's accusations it had not done enough to protect its embassy in Damascus, a minister saying that police had tried to shield it with their "bodies and blood".
Denmark has been the chief target of Muslim fury as it was a Danish newspaper that first printed the 12 caricatures of Mohammed last September. Since then they have appeared in newspapers in many Western countries, though not those of Britain and the United States.
In the violence in Tehran after first smashing and torching the facade of the embassy of Austria (currently European Union president), a group of some 400 student members of the Islamic hardline Basij militia moved on to Denmark's leafy diplomatic compound and attempted a full-scale assault.
Commerce Minister Masoud Mir-Kazemi announced a total ban on Danish imports.
The measure is in line with Ahmadinejad's order for contracts with countries where the media have carried the cartoons to be cancelled, and Mir-Kazemi suggested other countries could also be targeted.
Charge and countercharge continued with some European governments condemning the violence and expressing sympathy with Denmark. Voices on either side urged calm.
The European Council of Religious Leaders, which groups representatives of all Europe's religions, condemned both the publication of the cartoon and the ensuing violence in the Muslim world.