Paris, France - An international row over newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad gathered pace on Thursday as more European dailies printed controversial Danish caricatures and Muslims stepped up pressure to stop them.
About a dozen Palestinian gunmen surrounded European Union offices in the Gaza Strip demanding an apology for the cartoons, one of which shows Islam's founder wearing a bomb-shaped turban. Muslims consider any images of Mohammad to be blasphemous.
The owner of France Soir, a Paris daily that reprinted them on Wednesday along with one German and two Spanish papers, sacked its managing editor to show "a strong sign of respect for the beliefs and intimate convictions of every individual."
But the tabloid defended its right to print the cartoons, first published last September in Danish daily Jyllands-Posten.
The man named to replace Mr Lefranc in an interim role, Eric Fauveau, said he could not take up the post and also resigned as director general of Presse Alliance, France Soir's publishing group.
Mr Fauveau called the dismissal of Mr Lefranc "inopportune".
Jordanian independent tabloid al-Shihan reprinted three of the cartoons on Thursday, saying people should know what they were protesting about, AFP news agency reports.
"Muslims of the world be reasonable," wrote editor Jihad Momani.
"What brings more prejudice against Islam, these caricatures or pictures of a hostage-taker slashing the throat of his victim in front of the cameras or a suicide bomber who blows himself up during a wedding ceremony in Amman?"
The article in al-Shihan also included a list of Danish products.
Le Temps in Geneva and Budapest's Magyar Hirlap ran another offending cartoon showing an imam telling suicide bombers to stop because Heaven had run out of virgins to reward them.
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the issue had gone beyond a row between Copenhagen and the Muslim world and now centered on Western free speech versus taboos in Islam, which is now the second religion in many European countries.
"We are talking about an issue with fundamental significance to how democracies work," Rasmussen told the Copenhagen daily Politiken. "One can safely say it is now an even bigger issue."
His office said he and Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller had summoned foreign envoys in Copenhagen for a Friday meeting to discuss the outcry and the Danish government's response.
Denmark's ambassador in Paris met leaders of French Muslims, who have threatened legal action over the cartoons, handing over a letter of regret from Rasmussen, written in Arabic, and an apology from the director of Jyllands-Posten.
French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy told reporters that press freedom could not be called into question but urged restraint: "The principle of freedom should be exercised in a spirit of tolerance, respect of beliefs, respect of religions, which is the very basis of secularism of our country."
SCATHING ARAB REACTION
European Union External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner also called for restraint after talks in Brussels with Gulf Cooperation Council Secretary-General Abdul-Rahman al-Attiyah, who strongly criticized the cartoons.
"We are ... a society that likes tolerance and I think it has to be in our understanding that we have a sensitivity for other religious communities," she told reporters.
Danish companies have reported sales falling in the Middle East after protests against the cartoons in the Arab world and calls for boycotts. Morocco and Tunisia confiscated Wednesday's France Soir, which is widely distributed in North Africa.
Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef said Riyadh considered the cartoons an insult to Mohammad and all Muslims. "We hope that religious centers like the Vatican will clarify their opinion in this respect," he told the state news agency SPA.
In Beirut, the leader of Lebanon's Shi'ite Hizbollah said the row would never had occurred if a 17-year-old death edict against British writer Salman Rushdie been carried out.
The late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called on Muslims in 1989 to kill Rushdie for blasphemy against Islam in his book "The Satanic Verses." Rushdie went into hiding and was never attacked.
Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Mohammad, and
Syria have recalled their ambassadors to Denmark.
FRANCE SOIR'S SELF-DEFENCE
Defending its decision to publish the cartoons, France Soir wrote: "Imagine a society that added up all the prohibitions of different religions. What would remain of the freedom to think, to speak and even to come and go?
"We know societies like that all too well. The
Iran of the mullahs, for example. But yesterday, it was the France of the Inquisitions, the burning stakes and the Saint Bartholomew's Day (massacre of Protestants)."
Other European dailies printed cartoons mocking the row. Le Monde in Paris ran a sketch of a man whose beard and turban were made up of lines saying "I must not draw Mohammad."
Jyllands-Posten has apologized for any hurt the caricatures may have caused. Police said the paper's offices in Aarhus were evacuated on Wednesday for the second time in two days after a bomb threat. Workers returned after the all-clear.