COPENHAGEN, Feb 8 (Reuters) - The Danish newspaper that first published caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad, infuriating Muslims worldwide, previously turned down cartoons of Jesus as too offensive, the cartoonist said on Wednesday.
The newspaper's editor said the Jesus cartoon was unsolicited. He added that he hoped to publish Holocaust-themed cartoons that an Iran newspaper has solicited as a challenge to free-speech principles championed by Western media.
"We would run these cartoons the same day as they would publish them," Jyllands-Posten editor Flemming Rose told CNN television.
Twelve cartoons of the Prophet published last September by Jyllands-Posten have outraged Muslims, provoking violent protests in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. For many Muslims, images of the Prophet are considered blasphemous.
The newspaper's editor has apologized for offending Muslims by printing the cartoons, including one of the founder of Islam holding a bomb in his turban, but defended his right to do so in the interests of free speech.
Cartoonist Christoffer Zieler said the newspaper had turned down his cartoon depicting Jesus.
"My cartoon, which certainly did not offend any Christians I showed it to, was rejected because the editor felt it would be considered offensive to readers -- readers in general, not necessarily Christians," Zieler said in an e-mail to Reuters.
Jens Kaiser, the former editor of Jyllands-Posten's Sunday edition, who turned down the Jesus cartoons three years ago, said he had done so because they were no good.
"My fault is that I didn't tell him what I really meant: The cartoons were bad," Kaiser said in a statement. He said he told Zieler he had not used the cartoons because they were offensive to some readers.
Zieler's five colored cartoons portrayed Jesus jumping out of holes in floors and walls during his resurrection. In one, gnomes rated Jesus for style, another entitled "Saviour-cam" showed Jesus with a camera on his head staring at his feet.
Rose said the newspaper had every right to turn down an unsolicited freelance submission.
Dozens of newspapers in Europe and elsewhere have reproduced the Mohammad cartoons with a free-speech justification. Iran's best-selling newspaper said this week that it had launched a competition to find the best cartoon about the Holocaust to test Western free-speech tolerance.
Rose said he was trying to contact the Iranian paper to arrange publication of the Holocaust cartoons.
In Paris, the Movement against Racism and for Friendship between Peoples (MRAP) denounced the idea of printing the Holocaust cartoons in Europe, saying it would only escalate tensions and not serve to defend free speech.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has described the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis in World War Two, as a myth.
(Additional reporting by Rasmus Jorgensen)
