International

RIYADH/JEDDAH, 15 February 2006 – Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal yesterday called for European countries to prevent a repeat of the blasphemous cartoon scandal triggered by a Danish daily newspaper. Speaking to reporters after meeting with Dutch counterpart Bernard Bot in Riyadh, Prince Saud said that measures were essential to maintain the existing good relations between the European...

RIYADH, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Western firms in the Middle East said on Wednesday they were wary of attacks or protests relating to worldwide uproar over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, but saw no immediate danger. Protesters attacked Western businesses in Pakistan on Tuesday and police used teargas in Islamabad's diplomatic enclave in the latest violence over the drawings, first printed last year...

BRUSSELS, Feb. 15 (UPI) -- Maybe Samuel Huntington was right after all. In 1993, the Harvard professor published a seminal essay in "Foreign Affairs" in which he predicted that a "clash of civilizations" would dominate global politics for the foreseeable future. Ever since, it has become something of a ritual for world leaders to rubbish Huntington's thesis and play down the differences between a...

HELSINKI, Feb. 15 (Xinhuanet) -- Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja has sent an open letter to newspapers in several Muslim countries, condemning the intentional hurting of others' religiousfeelings, the Foreign Ministry said in a press release Wednesday. Tuomioja also appealed for restraint over the cartoon controversy. "Liberty of expression is a fundamental value and a democratic right in...

KEHL AM RHEIN, Germany, Feb. 15 (UPI) -- Germany may have a cartoon scandal of its own after a caricature in a Berlin newspaper provoked hate mail and even death threats for the caricaturist. The German daily Tagesspiegel last Friday published a caricature by artist Klaus Stuttmann, who attempted the German conservatives' eagerness to use army soldiers to safeguard the upcoming FIFA Soccer World...

MOSCOW, February 15 (RIA Novosti) - The Russian Prosecutor General's Office has launched a probe into the publication of a religious cartoon in a Volga-region newspaper, a spokesman said Wednesday. The cartoon, published in Volgograd newspaper Gorodskiye Izvestia depicts Jesus Christ, the Prophet Mohammed, Moses and Buddha looking at two groups of people ready to fight on a TV screen. The caption...

Russian prosecutors have launched an investigation against a local Volgograd newspaper that has published a cartoon featuring Jesus, Moses, Buda, and Mohammed. The prosecutors are to decide whether to launch criminal proceedings for hate instigation on religious grounds against the Gorodskiye Izvestia newspaper. The cartoon portrays all the four gods looking at a TV that is showing two groups of...

Three people were killed and scores injured in a third consecutive day of violent protests in Pakistan over the publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. A crowd of more than 70,000 people in the north-western city of Peshawar burned businesses and attacked police, who hit back with teargas and batons. One of the three people killed was a young boy, shot in the head. A Pakistani security...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's state television has begun broadcasting appeals for the release of kidnapped American journalist Jill Carroll including footage of her mother and a major Sunni Arab politician describing the 28-year-old freelancer as a friend of Iraq. Carroll, who reported from Iraq for the Christian Science Monitor, was kidnapped Jan. 7 in Baghdad while on her way from the office of Sunni...

Russia's Muslim rights activists are ready to demand that Russian publishing houses be shut down if they publish caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, a member of the Russian Public Chamber said Wednesday. 'We have information on the publication of [religious] cartoons,' said Kamilzhan Kalandarov, the head of the all-Russia public Islamic organization Al-Khak (Justice). 'We will be pushing for the...