International

COPENHAGEN - US President George W. Bush has expressed his full support for Denmark in the ongoing controversy over the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Tuesday. Adressing a news conference, Rasmussen said both leaders had agreed on the need to resume "dialogue" and "tolerance." The premier conceded that this was not easy against the backdrop of...

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Iranian-born barber Farzan Khatami has listened to reports of the anti-Danish protests across the Muslim world this week and he is sure of one thing -- the violence has to stop soon. He was personally offended by the cartoons satirizing the Prophet Mohammad, and says he feels discrimination on the streets of Copenhagen every day. But enough is enough. "Fire and stones are...

BRUSSELS, Feb 7 (Reuters) - The European Union, split over the rights and wrongs of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, urgently sought ways on Tuesday to end violent protests against European missions and citizens in Arab and Muslim states. EU president Austria said in a strongly worded statement it had instructed its embassies in the Middle East, Asia and Africa to demand increased security...

Kabul - The Taliban called on the Muslim world Tuesday to declare a holy war over the Prophet Mohammed cartoons that have appeared in publications around the globe as violent demonstrations continued around Afghanistan, a day after three people died there in protests over the caricatures. Taliban spokesman Qari Yussif Ahmadi told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that particularly Danish soldiers would...

Four people were killed and 19 injured as hundreds of Afghans clashed with police and soldiers yesterday during demonstrations against the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed. The worst of the violence was outside Bagram, the main US base, with Afghan police firing on some 2,000 protesters as they tried to break into the facility. Police in Mehtarlam, the eastern province of Laghman...

A DANISH lawyer was shot and several Muslim demonstrators died as protests against the publication of cartoons showing the Prophet Muhammad continued around the world yesterday. The lawyer was wounded in an incident in a Moscow cafe by a man from the Muslim Caucasus region of southern Russia. Meanwhile, the prime minister of Chechnya announced that Danish humanitarian organisations would be...

When I first saw them, I was struck by their crudeness. Surely Jyllands-Posten could have hired better artists. And surely cartoonists and editors ought to be able to spot the difference between Indian turbans and Arab ones. In some ways, that was the essence of the problem to begin with. It is this patronising tendency - stronger in Denmark than in countries such as Britain or Canada - that...

Mainstream British Muslim organisations yesterday publicly distanced themselves from further violence over the Danish cartoon issue by backing a rally in London in support of political and religious dialogue. Muslim leaders said last night they expected the rally would draw support from "across the political spectrum" in a clear signal of opposition to the way they believe a minority of extremists...

Web giant Google and incendiary "Muhammad cartoons" have more in common than 2.7 million search hits that phrase produces. Google - which self-censors in order to do business in China - and the toon tumult point to a need for smart sensitivity in exercising freedom of expression. Media such as Google or the newspapers that printed the cartoons must exercise responsible judgment, whether they flex...

YEMEN closed down a small newspaper and ordered the arrest of its editor today for reprinting caricatures of Prophet Mohammad that have caused outrage across the Muslim world, the official Saba news agency reported. "The Ministry of Information issued a decree annulling the licence of al-Hurriya," the agency said, referring to the small independent weekly with a circulation of around 2000. The...