Two New Zealand newspapers have waded into the international controversy over what many Muslims consider blasphemous cartoons of the the prophet Mohammad.
Wellington's Dominion Post and the Christchurch Press have joined a raft of European newspapers re-printing the Danish cartoons.
Dominion Post editor and chair of the Commonwealth Press Union, Tim Pankhurst, says it is an issue of solidarity and supporting press freedom.
Pankhurst says he is not setting out to deliberately antagonise the Muslim communities of New Zealand.
However, a major Islamic group is condemning the plans.
Federation of Islamic Associations' president Javad Khan said on Friday that Muslims in New Zealand would be outraged if such images were published here, as they make a mockery of the teachings of Islam.
He said the paper was jumping on a bandwagon, and was more interested in circulation figures than freedom of the press.
Dairy giant Fonterra says it is worried about how the New Zealand publication will affect its business in the Middle East.
After the images were first published in Denmark in September, the Danish-Swedish dairy company Arla Foods reported that its sales in the Middle East dropped off significantly.
Fonterra
is concerned it could suffer a similar fate, as Muslim countries
represent a large proportion of its trade.
A company spokesperson says Fonterra makes no judgement on whether
the cartoons should be published here, but it has a long
relationship with the Middle East and other Islamic countries in
Asia and Africa, and does not want to jeopardise that.
Protests across Muslim world
Meanwhile, European leaders are calling for restraint as more newspapers published caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad, and Muslims protested against the jokes.
Muslim protesters in Indonesia, Turkey and the Palestinian West Bank staged violent demonstrations against the cartoons depicting Mohammad, one with a turban resembling a bomb.
"I am concerned...about this escalation we have seen over the last few days," said Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik, whose country holds the European Union's presidency.
"From my point of view it is high time to take a step back and make an effort to see things with each other's eyes and heart. The language or gestures of threats gets us nowhere," she told a news conference in Vienna.
But there was little respite in the fury of Muslims who see the images of Mohammad as blasphemous, or a debate over freedom of speech verses respect for religion.
French President Jacques Chirac, whose country has a large Muslim minority, appealed for all sides to avoid "anything that could offend others' convictions," a spokesman said.
US condemns cartoons
The United States condemned the cartoons on Saturday, siding with Muslims who are outraged that newspapers put press freedom over respect for religion.
"We ... respect freedom of the press and expression but it must be coupled with press responsibility. Inciting religious or ethnic hatreds in this manner is not acceptable," said State Department spokesman Kurtis Cooper.
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen met Muslim envoys to seek calm, but he said he could not apologise on behalf of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper which first published the cartoons.
"Neither the Danish government nor the Danish nation as such can be held responsible for drawings published in a Danish newspaper," he said after the meeting.
"A Danish government can never apologise on behalf of a free and independent newspaper," he said. "This is basically a dispute between some Muslims and a newspaper."
Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Yuri Thamrin said the dispute pitted "the whole Islamic world vis-a-vis Denmark and vis-a-vis the trend of Islamophobia."
Up to 300 Islamic activists in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, rampaged in the lobby of a building housing the Danish embassy in Jakarta.
Shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest), they smashed lamps with bamboo sticks, threw chairs, lobbed rotten eggs and tomatoes and tore up a Danish flag. No one was hurt.
In the West Bank city of Ramallah, hundreds of Palestinians attended a Hamas-organised rally, tearing up a French flag and holding up banners reading: "The assault on the Prophet is an assault on Islam".
About 100 demonstrators protested outside the Danish consulate in Istanbul, tearing down a signpost, throwing eggs and leaving a black wreath in protest at the entrance.
Cardinal Achille Silvestrini, a retired Vatican diplomat who has had many dealings with Arab countries, told an Italian newspaper that Western culture had to know its limits.
Freedom must be shared
"Freedom is a great virtue but it must be shared and it must not be unilateral," Silvestrini said.
Mona Omar Attia, Egypt's ambassador to Denmark, said after meeting Rasmussen she was satisfied with the position of the Danish government but regretted the prime minister had said he could not interfere with the press.
Pakistan's parliament passed a resolution condemning the cartoons as "blasphemous and derogatory" and said they could not be justified in the name of freedom of the press.
Palestinian gunmen seized and later released a German on Thursday, and a hand grenade was thrown into the compound of the French Cultural Centre in the Gaza Strip.
Danish companies have reported sales falling in the Middle East after protests in the Arab world and calls for boycotts.
Rasmussen said he hoped the situation would improve soon but could have "unpredictable repercussions" if protests continue.
The editor of a Norwegian magazine which reprinted the Danish cartoons said he had received 25 death threats and thousands of hate messages.
A Jordanian editor was sacked for reprinting them, despite saying his purpose had been to show the extent of the Danish insult to Islam.
Iraqi Christians said they feared a new wave of attacks by Muslims, driven by anger over the images.
