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Iran's MPs demand severance of ties with Denmark over cartoon
Iranian parliamentarians on Sunday demanded the government sever ties with Denmark over the renewed publication of a controversial cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammed wearing a bomb shaped like a turban. A letter sent by 16 of 290 MPs called on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to sever both political and economic ties with Copenhagen due to 'renewed insults by the Danish press against Islam,' IRNA news agency reported. The Iranian Foreign Ministry has already summoned the Danish ambassador to Tehran and condemned the move. It called on the Danish government to confront 'such renewed insults' which were contrary to both humanitarian and democratic norms, Fars news agency reported. A Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad-Ali Hosseini on Sunday accused the Danish government of 'not doing enough to confront such moves', but declined to say what diplomatic measures the government would take. Leading Danish newspapers reprinted the cartoon last Wednesday, a day after police said they had thwarted an alleged plot to kill the cartoonist, Dane Kurt Westergaard. The cartoons sparked violent protests in 2006. But unlike 2006, there have been no demonstrations so far outside the Danish embassy in Tehran which was then attacked by angry Iranian Islamists. Posted by: Fred 2008-02-18 |
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