Danish PM to meet ambassadors in bid to defuse cartoons row
Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen was to meet foreign ambassadors today to brief them on the government’s position on the furore over a Danish newspaper’s publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
It was unclear which countries’ diplomats would attend the meeting, which also is to include Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller.
Fogh Rasmussen and Moeller were to detail the government’s position and actions in the matter.
The cartoons, which have been reprinted in newspapers in other European countries, have sparked threats of kidnapping against foreigners in the Palestinian territories and the boycott of Danish goods in parts of the Middle East.
In an interview with Arab satellite network Al-Arabiya, Fogh Rasmussen said he was “deeply distressed that many Muslims had seen the drawings in a Danish newspaper as a defamation of the Prophet Muhammad”.
One of the drawings depicts the prophet wearing a turban shaped like a bomb.
Fogh Rasmussen in October had declined to meet with ambassadors from 10 predominantly Islamic countries who objected to the drawings, saying the government had no influence on what Danish media did.
