New protests erupt in cartoon row
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-02-07 07:07

Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini on Monday said violent protests sweeping Muslim countries over the cartoons have been deliberately encouraged by Islamist militants. "We're sitting on a powder keg," he told an RAI television talk show.

Moderate Muslims as well as Western leaders condemned the weekend violence and calls to arms and urged calm.

"With growing concern, we are witnessing the escalation in disturbing tensions," the prime ministers of Turkey and Spain said in the International Herald Tribune.

"We shall all be the losers if we fail to immediately defuse this situation, which can only leave a trail of mistrust and misunderstanding between both sides in its wake," Tayyip Erdogan and Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said in the joint article.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for dialogue between Islam and the West.

"The events as we have seen them unfolding are another calling for us to face that dialogue and to assure ourselves of our own values, but also to articulate them clearly and responsibly," she told public broadcaster ZDF on Monday evening.

Iran, which has withdrawn its ambassador from Denmark said the cartoons "launched an anti-Islamic and Islamophobic current which will be answered."

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki called for an emergency meeting of the world's largest Muslim body, the Organization of the Islamic Conference to discuss Islamophobia in the West.

There was a flurry of public statements as well as behind-the-scenes diplomatic activity to contain the situation.

French President Jacques Chirac telephoned Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Monday to express solidarity with Denmark and to examine how to calm the situation.

EU ambassadors agreed at an emergency meeting in Brussels on Monday to enhance diplomatic contacts to improve dialogue with the Islamic world and ensure security of diplomatic premises.