Wellington - New Zealand was braced on Sunday for fallout from the Islamic world after two newspapers published controversial Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed, with a potential trade ban by Iran the main concern.
New Zealand diplomats in Muslim countries were also warned to take precautions against possible threats to staff and property, the Sunday Star Times reported.
The New Zealand government attacked the papers that published the cartoons on Saturday, with Trade Negotiations Minister Jim Sutton dubbing them "gratuitously offensive" and saying that by upsetting Muslim nations the publishers were putting the island nation's economy at risk.
The government's immediate worry was a reported threat by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to review all economic relations with countries where the cartoons had been published.
Iran is an important market for New Zealand, buying more than NZ$100-million (about 420-million) in good annually from the world's biggest exporter of dairy products.
Reports of demonstrators setting fire to Denmark's embassy in Syria's capital Damascus in protest against the original publication of the caricatures in September in a Danish newspaper led news bulletins Sunday morning on Radio New Zealand.
Some Muslim shopkeepers were reported on Saturday to have refused to sell the two newspapers, Wellington's Dominion Post and The Press, Christchurch, which claimed they published the cartoons as part of "the battle between freedom of speech and religion".
Javed Khan, president of the Federation of Islamic Associations, said that Muslim groups in New Zealand would discuss whether to lodge complaints with the race relations commissioner and Ethnic Affairs Minister Chris Carter, or to take up the issue directly with the papers.
"It is hard to see why the publication of cartoons known to be deeply offensive to Muslim communities is such an important point of principle to the New Zealand media who have published them," Carter said Saturday.
"What good did it to publishing these cartoons and what damage could it do to communities in New Zealand and to New Zealand's international reputation?"
