More cartoons, protests in prophet blasphemy row

An international row over newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad gathered pace yesterday as more European dailies printed controversial Danish caricatures and Muslims increased pressure to stop them.

A dozen Palestinian gunmen surrounded European Union offices in the Gaza Strip demanding an apology for the cartoons, one of which shows Islam's founder wearing a bomb-shaped turban. Muslims consider any images of Mohammad to be blasphemous.

Palestinian gunmen kidnapped and later released a German from a hotel in the West Bank city of Nablus, witnesses said.

Earlier, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades threatened at a news conference to kidnap citizens of France, Denmark and Norway if they did not leave Nablus within 72 hours. Newspapers in Germany and Spain have also reprinted the caricatures.

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.

The owner of France Soir, a Paris daily that reprinted the cartoons on Wednesday along with a German paper, sacked its managing editor to show "a strong sign of respect for the beliefs and intimate convictions of every individual".

But the tabloid defended its right to print the cartoons, first published last September in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten.

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.

Some politicians criticised the press for fuelling the row.

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the issue had gone beyond a row between Copenhagen and the Muslim world and now centred on Western free speech versus taboos in Islam, which is now the second religion in many European countries.

"We are talking about an issue with fundamental significance to how democracies work," Mr Rasmussen told the Copenhagen daily Politiken. "One can safely say it is now an even bigger issue."

Mr Rasmussen's office said he and Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller had summoned foreign envoys in Copenhagen for a meeting today to discuss the outcry and the government's response.

Denmark's ambassador in Paris met leaders of French Muslims, who have threatened legal action. The ambassador handed over a letter of regret from Mr Rasmussen, written in Arabic, and an apology from the director of Jyllands-Posten.

France's tough-talking Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy defended the newspapers' decision to print the cartoons, adding he was surprised France Soir had sacked its editor.

"We must defend freedom of expression and if I had to chose, I prefer the excess of caricature over the excess of censure," Mr Sarkozy said, adding there was no reason to make an exception for one religion over another.