Florida pastor calls off Koran burning

A Florida pastor late yesterday abandoned plans to burn hundreds of Korans, saying Muslim leaders had vowed to relocate a mosque due to be opened close to the Ground Zero site in New York.

“We felt that that would be a sign that God would want us to do it. The American people do not want the mosque there, and, of course, Muslims do not want us to burn the Koran,” Terry Jones, head of the Dove World Outreach Centre, told a press conference.

“The imam has agreed to move the mosque. We have agreed to cancel our event on Saturday, and on Saturday I will be flying up there to meet with him,” Pastor Jones told journalists outside his small evangelical church in Gainesville, Florida.

One of the organisers behind plans to build a $100-million Islamic cultural centre in New York immediately denied the pastor’s claim of a deal.

Pastor Jones, the pastor of the small church of about 50 members, had planned to burn the Korans on Saturday’s ninth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks to honour the almost 3,000 people killed in the Al-Qaeda attacks.

Amid global condemnation, religious leaders led moves to try to stop the burning, and Florida-based imam Mohammed Musri met for a second time yesterday with the pastor.

Imam Musri said he had been in contact with New York imam Feisal Abdul Rauf to win a commitment to fly to New York to meet with him and Pastor Jones “to discuss and come to a decision on relocating the mosque in New York”.

However, the organisers behind the controversial plans swiftly denied the claim by the radical Florida pastor that they had decided to move the project elsewhere.

“We don’t know anything about it,” one of the main promoters Daisy Khan, and the wife of the imam behind the project, said.

Asked about the possibility of agreeing not to build the centre at the current location, two blocks from the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Ms Khan said there was no immediate plan for a change.

“What the imam said yesterday is our position,” she said.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf on Wednesday said he was sorry about the controversy and said he would not have pressed the project if he’d known in advance how much “pain” would occur.

However, he stressed that the centre’s construction should go ahead as planned.

“If we move from that location, the story will be the radicals have taken over the discourse,” said Abdul Rauf, who has been an imam in New York for more than 25 years and is known for attempts to bridge the divide between Western and Islamic societies.

A fierce debate has raged around the proposals to open an Islamic cultural centre close to the site where the World Trade Centre once stood until it was destroyed in the 9/11 Al-Qaeda attacks.

“I want to thank Pastor Jones for his courage and his willingness to take these serious events that are unfolding,” Imam Musri added.

Tomorrow’s planned Koran burning had ignited international outrage and sparked warnings that it would trigger an Islamic backlash.

The State Department had issued a travel alert to “caution US citizens of the potential for anti-US demonstrations in many countries... some of which may turn violent.

And the global police agency Interpol had also warned of “tragic consequences” if the event goes ahead.

Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said “there is a strong likelihood that violent attacks on innocent people would follow”.

In a sign of gathering Muslim rage, thousands of Afghans marched through a small town near Kabul yesterday, chanting anti-US and anti-Christian slogans.

The Organisation of the Islamic Conference, which represents the entire Muslim world, said the act would constitute “an outrageous path of hatred”.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, leader of the world’s biggest Muslim nation, told Mr Obama in a letter it would torpedo attempts to reconcile Muslims and the West.

“Indonesia and the US are building or bridging relations between the Western world and Islam. If the Koran burning occurs, then those efforts will be useless,” Mr Yudhoyono wrote.

The White House yesterday had been weighing whether to appeal directly to Pastor Jones to call off the planned ceremony.