Copenhagen (dpa) - The Danish newspaper at the centre of the Mohammed caricature row sent its cultural editor Flemming Rose on an extended enforced leave of absence Thursday.
The Jyllands Posten was reacting to Rose's plan from Tuesday to publish caricatures of Jesus as well as caricatures of the Holocaust planned by Iran.
The editorial board had denied that it planned to publish the caricatures in the newspaper.
The board said the decision to send Rose on enforced leave was due to the amount of pressure the chief editor of the newspaper's cultural section had been under in recent weeks.
Rose initiated the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed at the end of September.
He defended the caricatures, which led to protests worldwide by Muslims, as an attempt to test what he said was the increasing tendency towards self-censorship in the media with regard to Islam.
Meanwhile UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced plans to travel Monday to Washington to discuss the situations in Iran and Iraq and the Danish cartoons that unleashed worldwide protests with US President George W. Bush.
Annan will visit the White House for the fist time in two years on Monday. But he said he has had frequent telephone conversations and met Bush on several occasions over that time.
"I think we are working reasonably well together, both with the president and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice," Annan told reporters.
"I would not be surprised if the issue of the cartoons comes up," he said of the expected discussion that will include the war in Iraq, the dispute over Iran's nuclear capability and the conflicts in Darfur and Ivory Coast.
Both Annan and Bush have called for an end to violence by Muslims against Danish installations across the Arabic world after a Danish newspaper published 12 caricatures satirizing Islam's holy prophet Mohammed. The cartoons have been reprinted by at least 20 other newspapers in Europe, the US, New Zealand, Jordan and elsewhere, provoking an uproar in most Muslim nations.
When he met Bush at The White House in 2004, Annan was a critic of Bush's Iraq war policy, and a cold atmosphere prevailed between the two. The UN fell into further disfavour last year with Washington when investigators revealed corruption and mismanagement in the UN- led oil-for-food scheme in Iraq from 1996 to 2003.
Annan himself was blamed for serious management lapses in the oil- for-food programme. He will end his 10-year tenure as UN chief in December.
