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New protests erupt in cartoon row
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-02-07 07:07
Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini on Monday said violent protests
sweeping Muslim countries over the cartoons have been deliberately encouraged by
Islamist militants. "We're sitting on a powder keg," he told an RAI television
talk show.
Moderate Muslims as well as Western leaders condemned the weekend violence
and calls to arms and urged calm.
"With growing concern, we are witnessing the escalation in disturbing
tensions," the prime ministers of Turkey and Spain said in the International
Herald Tribune.
"We shall all be the losers if we fail to immediately defuse this situation,
which can only leave a trail of mistrust and misunderstanding between both sides
in its wake," Tayyip Erdogan and Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said in the joint
article.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for dialogue between Islam and the
West.
"The events as we have seen them unfolding are another calling for us to face
that dialogue and to assure ourselves of our own values, but also to articulate
them clearly and responsibly," she told public broadcaster ZDF on Monday
evening.
Iran, which has withdrawn its ambassador from Denmark said the cartoons
"launched an anti-Islamic and Islamophobic current which will be answered."
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki called for an emergency meeting of the
world's largest Muslim body, the Organization of the Islamic Conference to
discuss Islamophobia in the West.
There was a flurry of public statements as well as behind-the-scenes
diplomatic activity to contain the situation.
French President Jacques Chirac telephoned Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh
Rasmussen on Monday to express solidarity with Denmark and to examine how to
calm the situation.
EU ambassadors agreed at an emergency meeting in Brussels on Monday to
enhance diplomatic contacts to improve dialogue with the Islamic world and
ensure security of diplomatic premises.
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