Iran rejects claims it inflamed violence

IRAN yesterday rejected US and Danish accusations the government had inflamed last week’s violent protests against western embassies in Tehran over caricatures of Mohammed and demanded an apology.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi singled out comments by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and said Denmark should apologise to help calm the furore that has erupted over the images that first appeared in a Danish newspaper four months ago.

"What happened was a natural reaction. Rice and Danish officials should apologise. Such comments could worsen the situation and an apology could alleviate the tension," Mr Asefi said.

While many of the protests over the cartoons deemed offensive to Islam have been peaceful, Danish and other European diplomatic missions were attacked by demonstrators last week in Syria, Lebanon and Iran. Nearly a dozen people were killed in protests in Afghanistan.

Ms Rice said on Wednesday: "Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and to use this to their own purposes. And the world ought to call them on it."

When asked to offer evidence on ABC's This Week, she pointed to the fact that little happens in the two countries without government permission.

"I can say that the Syrians tightly control their society and the Iranians even more tightly. It is well known that Iran and Syria bring protesters into the streets when they wish, to make a point," she said yesterday.

The drawings including one that depicts the prophet wearing a turban shaped like a bomb have been reprinted in several publications in Europe, the US and elsewhere in what publishers say is a show of solidarity for freedom of expression.

Protests continued yesterday, with ultra-nationalist Turks pelting the French consulate in Istanbul with eggs as about 2,500 pro-Islamic demonstrators shouted: "Down with America, Israel and Denmark".

Graffiti insulting the prophet Mohammed including offensive slogans equating Islam's founder with a pig, an animal Muslims regard to be unclean also was found scrawled on a West Bank mosque, touching off a protest in which three Palestinians were shot by Israeli soldiers and an Israeli woman was slightly injured by stones thrown at her car.

Israeli soldiers erased the slogans, but hundreds of villagers gathered to protest the graffiti, which they blamed on Jewish settlers.

In Pakistan, about 1,500 protesters gathered in central Islamabad and a further 1,000 rallied in the eastern city of Multan to protest the publication of the cartoons.

The United Nations last week temporarily grounded all helicopters involved in earthquake relief work in northern Pakistan as a precautionary measure, an official said yesterday.

The grounding "created no hardship" for survivors and the UN has no plans to withdraw any personnel, the spokesperson said.

The Iranian foreign minister told reporters that Denmark could have resolved the problem had it apologised immediately for the caricatures. He also repeated claims by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the drawings were part of an Israeli conspiracy.

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has repeatedly said he cannot apologise for the actions of a free press.

"Neither the government nor the Danish people can be held responsible for what is published in a free and independent newspaper," he said yesterday on CNN's Late Edition.