Pakistan sees most violent reaction to cartoons

Security guards shot dead two men, police used teargas on students in Islamabad's diplomatic enclave and protesters attacked Western businesses yesterday in Pakistan's most violent reaction yet to cartoons of the Prophet.

In Iran, scores of demonstrators hurled petrol bombs at the British embassy in renewed protests against the cartoons and Western opposition to Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

The EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana said the dispute should not be allowed to divide Europe and the Muslim world, while a senior US state department official said it showed moderate Muslims needed a stronger voice.

Mr Solana is touring Muslim states to try to calm anger over the cartoons, published by Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten last September and reprinted in many European countries in a debate about the rights and restrictions of free speech.

Many Muslims believe it is blasphemous to depict the Prophet Mohammad.

Pakistan's Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao said guards at a bank that was attacked by protesters in the eastern city of Lahore shot dead two men.

Police fired into the air and baton-charged protesters who set vehicles alight and ransacked outlets of international fast food companies, including McDonald's, KFC and Pizza Hut, and the Norwegian mobile phone firm Telenor, witnesses said.

Protesters also hurled stones at a Holiday Inn hotel and Western-owned filling stations. About 2,000 people staged a sit-in near the provincial assembly.

In Islamabad, police fired tear gas to drive out about 400 students who stormed the heavily-guarded diplomatic enclave. The protesters reached the Indian High Commission, which is next to the British High Commission, before being driven back.

Demonstrators smashed windows of cars and a branch of British bank Standard Chartered and shouted "Death to Denmark" and "Expel European ambassadors".

The protests were the most serious in Pakistan, the second-most populous Muslim nation and a key US ally, since the cartoons row erupted.

The diplomatic enclave is home to many European embassies and that of the United States, but not that of Denmark. It is barricaded and guarded by armed police. Extra police have been posted on roads around embassies and diplomatic residences.

Protesters tore down portraits of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and about 3,000 people shouted anti-American slogans outside parliament. In Iran, the protesters, mostly religious seminary students, chanted "Death to Tony Blair", "Death to Britain" and Death to America" while hurling stones at the British embassy buildings, smashing many windows.

The Danish cartoons have been reproduced by only a handful of British media outlets and most major US publications have also refrained from publishing them.

Violent protests have also taken place outside the Tehran embassies of Denmark, Norway, Austria, France and Germany.

"Insulting the Prophet disgusts us and nuclear energy gives us dignity," about 200 people at the British embassy shouted. The West suspects Iran of trying to build nuclear weapons.

Cheers erupted when a petrol bomb was thrown over the high wall surrounding the embassy compound in central Tehran. Several other petrol bombs struck the wall and the main gate.

Scuffles broke out between the protesters and dozens of riot police. Stones and firecrackers were thrown at the nearby German embassy by a smaller crowd of protesters earlier yesterday.

Wolfgang Schuessel, chancellor of Austria which holds the EU presidency, said the violence was "simply not acceptable".

"I am urgently calling upon Iran to fulfil its obligations under the Vienna Convention (on the protection of diplomatic facilities)," he told a news conference in Vienna. The US state department praised Pakistan's efforts to protect diplomats, contrasting this with Iran and Syria.

US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe Dan Fried, in Europe to consult with governments on how to ease tensions sparked by the cartoons, said Europe and the United States needed to do more to support democracy, reform and reformers.