Bush, Rice told to ‘shut up’ over cartoon issue

Organized violence?
In Afghanistan, where three days of riots left more than 10 people dead, U.S. military spokesman Col. James Yonts said the United States and other countries are examining whether extremist groups incited the violence.

“Other countries are having the same demonstrations, same problems — very violent demonstrations, starting peaceful, turning violent,” Yonts said when asked if al-Qaida and the Taliban may have been involved.

He said the United States and other countries would look to see “if this is something larger than just a small demonstration — if there is a tie to it, if there is an infrastructure, a connection to it.”

Zahor Afghan, the editor of Erada, Afghanistan’s most respected newspaper, said he felt there was definite incitement.

“No media in Afghanistan has published or broadcast pictures of these cartoons. The radio has been reporting on it, but there are definitely people using this to incite violence against the presence of foreigners in Afghanistan,” he said.

Background to the controversy
The cartoons were first published on Sept. 30 in a Danish Daily, The Jyllands-Posten. Several days later, a coalition of Muslims in Denmark demanded a meeting with the country’s Culture Ministry to protest the drawings, but the ministry refused.

CARTOON FURY U.S. cartoonists weigh in on the controversy

The Muslim coalition turned to foreign embassies, and then went on a tour of the Muslim and Arab world between December and January to call attention to the cartoons. Soon after, newspapers around the world began republishing the drawings and the issue returned to the spotlight.

Newspapers have argued that publishing the cartoons is a matter of free speech, but many Muslims find that argument hard to believe.

In related developments reported Thursday:

• Two staff at a university in the United Arab Emirates were sacked after one of them, an American, made copies of the cartoons in an attempt to spur debate among her students. Her colleague, a British man, was fired when he defended her.
• Egypt banned the latest Arabic editions of the German magazines Der Speigel and Focus because they reprinted the cartoons, the Egyptian state news agency MENA said.
• A Malaysian daily reported on Thursday that the government had decided to suspend the publishing license of the Sarawak Tribune newspaper for publishing the caricatures last weekend apparently to illustrate a story on the global outrage.
• The directors of two Algerian television channels were also sacked for showing the cartoons during news coverage.

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