Iran Rejects Charge of Inflaming Violence Says Rice Should Apologize

Nasser Karimi, Forbes:

Iran on Sunday rejected U.S. and Danish accusations that the government had inflamed and encouraged last week's violent protests against Western embassies in Tehran over caricatures of Islam's Prophet Muhammad and demanded an apology.

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

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

While many of the protests over the caricatures 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 also were killed in protests in Afghanistan.

Rice said Wednesday that "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," the Secretary of State 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 Sunday.

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

Protests continued Sunday. Ultra-nationalist Turks, chanting "vengeance," pelted 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 Muhammad - 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 in the area gathered to protest the graffiti, which they blamed on Jewish settlers.

The Iranian foreign minister told reporters Sunday that Denmark could have resolved the problem had it apologized 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 repeatedly has said he cannot apologize 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 Sunday on CNN's "Late Edition."

He also said he agreed with Rice.

"I think she has a point. It's obvious to me that certain countries take advantage of this situation to distract attention from their own problems with the international community, including Syria and Iran," he said.

Denmark has withdrawn embassy staff from Iran, Syria and Indonesia. It also warned Danes to leave Indonesia, saying they faced a "significant and imminent danger" from an extremist group.

Indonesia's Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said Sunday that the decision was "too hasty" as protests in the world's most populous Muslim nation had been "orderly enough" and police had boosted security at Denmark's diplomatic facilities.

Protests over the cartoons have been relatively small across Indonesia, although hard-liners last week briefly stormed the lobby of the high-rise building housing the Danish Embassy in Jakarta and threw stones at the Scandinavian country's consulate in Surabaya city.

Protesters took to the streets again Sunday, with about 1,000 Muslims staging a noisy but peaceful demonstration in the West Java town of Sumedang, according to the el-Shinta radio station. Around 500 turned out in Jakarta.

Also Sunday, a poll published in Jyllands-Posten, the paper that first published the prophet drawings in September, showed that the anti-immigration Danish People's Party is gaining support as outrage sweeps the Muslim world over the cartoons.

The party received 17.8 percent support in the Feb. 6-8 survey by pollster Ramboll Management, up 3.6 points from a similar survey a month earlier. The margin of error was not available, but pollsters said they questioned 1,058 people for the survey.

The Danish People's Party leader Pia Kjaersgaard has accused a group of Danish Islamic leaders of inciting the outrage in Muslim countries by spreading anti-Danish propaganda. She called them "the enemy within" in her most recent weekly newsletter.

In other developments:

_ Algerian editors Kamel Bousaad and Berkane Bouderbala have been taken into police custody for publishing the caricatures of the prophet, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said Sunday.

_ The Indian government expressed its "deep concern" about the growing controversy in an official statement late Saturday, urging greater sensitivity to the beliefs of others.