The United States entered the row over the Muhammad cartoons on Wednesday, accusing Syria and Iran of stoking up protests against the caricatures to suit their own ends. In France, the publication of all the offending cartoons by a magazine sparked further protests.
Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, said: ”I have no doubt that Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and have used this for their own purposes. The world ought to call them on it.”
Angry demonstrations aimed at European and Western targets showed no signs of abating. In Tehran, protesters pelted the British embassy with stones, even though the British press has refrained from publishing the material.
US President George Bush on Wednesday urged calm. He said: ”I call upon the governments around the world to stop the violence, to be respectful, to protect property, to protect the lives of innocent diplomats who are serving their countries overseas.”
The European Union foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, is due to visit Muslim and Arab countries in an effort to build bridges. The cartoons were published in more than 20 countries.
In a further development, the Danish editor behind the original publication of the cartoons said he was trying to liaise with an Iranian paper planning to publish cartoons about the Holocaust.
”My newspaper is trying to establish a contact with the Iranian newspaper and we would run the cartoons the same day as they publish them,” Flemming Rose, culture editor of Jyllands-Posten, told CNN. The Iranian newspaper, Hamshahri, had earlier announced a competition for Holocaust-related cartoons.
President Jacques Chirac of France accused newspapers printing the cartoons of ”provocation”, after the Paris-based weekly Charlie Hebdo ran the controversial caricatures.
”Anything that can hurt the convictions of another, particularly religious convictions, must be avoided. Freedom of expression must be exercised in a spirit of responsibility,” Chirac told his Cabinet, according to a government spokesperson. ”I condemn all manifest provocation that might dangerously fan passions.”
The president spoke out after the magazine printed the 12 cartoons first published by Jyllands-Posten in September, as well as a new front-page caricature of its own. Under the headline ”Muhammad stressed out by the fundamentalists”, it showed a cartoon of the prophet with head in hands uttering the words, ”It’s hard to be loved by fools.”
As well as the cartoons that have prompted fury in the Islamic world, it published other drawings poking fun at different religions.
Charlie Hebdo said the initial 160 000 copies it had printed were selling so fast on Wednesday that it would proceed with a further print run.
Muslim groups had tried to get the magazine stopped for inciting religious and racial hatred, but a French court refused to grant an injunction.
A cartoonist from the magazine, who wished to remain anonymous, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ”Actually we don’t mean to be offensive and we show other respect to the Muslim believers, but we also believe very much that the freedom of speech has to be enforced by publishing these cartoons.”
Journalists and members of Arabic and Islamic human rights organisations were to meet in a Paris hotel on Thursday to try to defuse some of the anger. The Paris-based international journalists’ organisation Reporters sans Frontières has joined forces with human rights groups in what a spokesperson described as ”an effort to stop the cycle of violence set off by the publication of the Muhammad cartoons”.
They plan to discuss ”ways to protect free expression while ensuring respect for religious sensibilities of various kinds, to avoid political exploitation of this controversy, and to resume a dialogue”.
Organisations that have agreed to take part include the Arab Commission for Human Rights, the European Islamic Conference, Justitia Universali, Euro-Arab Cultural Encounter, Voix Libre from Tunisia, and the Association of Human Rights Activists from Egypt.
Three people were killed in southern Afghanistan when police opened fire at protesters trying to storm a US base in the southern province of Zabul. Ten people have so far died in demonstrations against the cartoons in Afghanistan.
There have also been protests in Lebanon, Syria, Indonesia, Pakistan and Gaza. Danish embassy staff in countries where there have been violent reactions have been ordered home.
On Wednesday night, there were signs of a new front opening up, when suspected Muslim hackers broke into about 600 Danish websites to post death threats. — Guardian Unlimited Â