World leaders reject Qu’ran burning

2010-09-09 23:00

Kabul - World leaders lined up on Thursday to condemn a US church's plan to burn copies of the Qu’ran, warning it would invite an extremist backlash, as thousands of Muslims took to the streets of Afghanistan in protest.

While Pakistan's president said Saturday's planned torching ceremony in Florida would inflame Muslim sentiment throughout the world, commanders of the US-led forces in neighbouring Afghanistan feared it would put troops' lives at risk.

In the town of Mahmud Raqi, close to the massive US-run Bagram Air Base, Afghans chanted "Down with America" and other anti-Christian slogans as they marched in their thousands, a provincial government spokesperson said.

Florida's Dove World Outreach Centre has so far defied calls to scrap the plan to burn 200 copies of the Qu’ran on the anniversary of the September 11 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

The US State Department confirmed it had asked its diplomatic missions overseas to assess potential threats if the burning goes ahead.

General David Petraeus, the overall commander of international forces in Afghanistan, warned the act could be as harmful as the 2004 Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq, in which images of naked prisoners abused by Americans were published.

Brigadier General Hans-Werner Fritz, the commander of German troops in Afghanistan, said the burning would "provide a trigger... for violence towards all Isaf troops, including the Germans in northern Afghanistan."

Despicable

Canada's government expressed similar concerns, saying the torching plan "flames intolerance" including towards its own Afghanistan contingent.

Pakistan slammed the planned ceremony as a "despicable" act that could inflame Muslim sentiment across the world.

"It will inflame sentiments among Muslims throughout the world and cause irreparable damage to interfaith harmony and also to world peace," President Asif Ali Zardari said.

Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki warned that the event may be used "as a pretext by the extremists to carry out more killings".

"Those who committed the crime of September 11 have nothing to do with Islam," he said.

Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono warned of the impact between the Muslim world and the West in a letter to his US counterpart Barack Obama.

"Indonesia and the US are building or bridging relations between the Western world and Islam. If the Qu’ran burning occurs, then those efforts will be useless," wrote Yudhoyono, leader of the world's biggest Muslim mation.

Obama said the planned torching would be a "recruitment bonanza" for extremist groups such as al-Qaeda.

Serious violence

"This could increase the recruitment of individuals who'd be willing to blow themselves up in American cities, or European cities," he told a US television network.

"You know, you could have serious violence in places like Pakistan or Afghanistan."

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the Qu’ran burning plans "unacceptable".

"I sincerely hope that they will not take such unacceptable actions," he told a press briefing.

The potential terrorist repercussions worldwide from such actions were underlined by Robert Noble, head of the global police agency Interpol, who warned that "if the proposed Koran burning... goes ahead as planned, there is a strong likelihood that violent attacks on innocent people would follow."

India, which has the world's third largest Muslim population, called on the US authorities to take "strong action" and for Indian media to impose a blackout on images of the event.

France's foreign ministry blasted what it called an "incitement to hatred" of Muslims, and "an insult to the memory of the victims of September 11".

British Prime Minister David Cameron's spokesperson said he "strongly opposed" any attempt to offend members of a religious group while former premier Tony Blair described the planned torching as "disrespectful".

US authorities have said there is little they can do to stop the event from going ahead, as it is protected by the constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech.

- SAPA