Denmark, Norway condemn cartoon bounty

Denmark and Norway today condemned as incitement to murder a Pakistani cleric's offer of a reward for anyone who kills any of the 12 Danish cartoonists who lampooned the Prophet Muhammad.

"It's murder and murder is also forbidden by the Koran," Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller told a news conference with his colleague Jonas Gahr Stoere from Norway, which has been dragged into the row after a paper there published the cartoons.

"Islam is also a religion of peace, mercy and forgiveness. That is why it is my opinion, but also the opinion of many Muslims, this is un-Islamic," he said.

A Pakistani Muslim cleric and his followers offered rewards on Friday amounting to more than $1 million for killing one of the Danish cartoonists, who have been under police protection since the storm of protest broke out last month.

"If the West can place a bounty on Osama bin Laden and Zawahri we can also announce reward for killing the man who has caused this sacrilege of the holy Prophet," cleric Maulana Yousef Qureshi said, referring to the al-Qaeda leader and his deputy Ayman al Zawahri.

At Friday prayers in the city of Peshawar, he set a bounty of 500,000 rupees ($8,400) and two of his congregation put up rewards of $1 million and one million rupees plus a car.

Danish paper Jyllands-Postenfirst published the cartoons last September, but Danish Muslim leaders brought them to the attention of imams in the Middle East in December and January. Many newspapers and magazines in Europe and elsewhere have run the cartoons in defence of free speech.

Five people died in protests in Pakistan last week, and the Danish ambassador there temporarily returned home at the weekend, saying he was unable to work in the circumstances. Denmark has already shut its missions in Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Indonesia.

One of the cartoonists said on Friday it was "not the first time we have been threatened but I dislike it every time.

"The drawing I made was meant as a practical joke and I have been dragged into this absurd situation," he said. "I didn't think anybody outside the newspaper's readers in Jutland would see it, now more than a billion people have."