Rice: Cartoon protests could spin out of control

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said today that violent protests in the Muslim world over caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed could “spin out of control” if governments refuse to act responsibly.

Rice, speaking from Washington on ABC television’s “This Week,” said Iran and Syria, in particular, should be urging their citizens to remain calm – not encouraging protests against Western embassies.

“If people continue to incite it, it can spin out of control,” she said of the protests. Last week, demonstrators in Iran attacked the Danish, French and Austrian embassies with stones and firebombs. Violence against diplomatic buildings has also erupted in Syria.

The governments of Iran and Syria, Rice said, organise street protests whenever they want to make a point.

“Everybody understands that there’s a sense of outrage, that these cartoons were inappropriate in the Muslim world,” Rice said. “But you don’t express your outrage by going out and burning down embassies. … You express your outrage peacefully.”

Iran rejected earlier US and Danish accusations that the government had encouraged the protests.

The cartoons, first published in a Danish newspaper in September, were seen by millions of Muslims around the world as an attack on Islam and an insult to their revered prophet.

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, speaking on CNN television’s “Late Edition”, said certain countries, including Syria and Iran, “take advantage of this situation to distract attention from their own problems with the international community”.

Rasmussen said neither the Danish people nor the Danish government “can be held responsible for what is published in an independent newspaper”.