DANISH Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller yesterday received a petition with 60,000 signatures calling for reconciliation between Denmark and the Muslim world following the crisis over the Prophet Mohammed cartoons.

Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller today received a petition with 60,000 signatures calling for reconciliation between Denmark and the Muslim world following the crisis over the Prophet Mohammed cartoons.

Denmark’s foreign minister today blamed extremists for violent protests in Muslim countries against the Prophet Mohammed cartoons and warned that al-Qaida would exploit the situation.

The Danish government was to brief parliament today on the attacks on Danish diplomatic missions during protests over a newspaper’s cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

Muslim rage over caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed spilled out of Syria today into neighbouring Lebanon where thousands of protesters – undaunted by police tear gas and water cannons – torched the Danish mission and ransacked a Christian neighbourhood.

Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen was to meet foreign ambassadors today to brief them on the government’s position on the furore over a Danish newspaper’s publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

Denmark, which holds a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council, wants to create a United Nations ombudsman whose job will be to scrutinise the names on the world body’s terrorist lists.

Denmark today said it was not worried by reports that two Canadian warships were heading for a tiny Arctic island claimed by both countries.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said that for the first time in nearly two years of fighting, he sees the possibility of a negotiated deal with the Palestinians.