Iran blasts West for cartoons

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran’s hard-line president on Saturday accused the United States and Europe of being “hostages of Zionism” and said they should pay a heavy price for the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that have triggered worldwide protests.

Denmark – where the drawings were first published four months ago – warned Danes to leave Indonesia, saying they faced a “significant and imminent danger” from an extremist group, and announced it had withdrawn embassy staff from Jakarta, Iran and Syria.

Muslims in several European and Asian countries, meanwhile, kept up their protests of the caricatures, with thousands taking to the streets in London’s biggest protest over the issue so far.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is deeply at odds with much of the international community over Iran’s disputed nuclear program, launched an anti-Israeli campaign last fall when he said the Holocaust was a “myth” and that Israel should be “wiped off the map.”

Last week, demonstrators in the tightly controlled country attacked the Danish, French and Austrian embassies with stones and firebombs and hit the British mission with rocks.

In a speech marking the 27th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution on Saturday, Ahmadinejad linked his public rage with Israel and the cartoons satirizing Islam’s most revered figure.

“I ask everybody in the world not to let a group of Zionists who failed in Palestine (referring to the recent Hamas victory in Palestinian elections) to insult the prophet,” he said.

“Now in the West insulting the prophet is allowed, but questioning the Holocaust is considered a crime,” he said. “We ask, why do you insult the prophet? The response is that it is a matter of freedom, while in fact they (who insult the founder of Islam) are hostages of the Zionists. And the people of the U.S. and Europe should pay a heavy price for becoming hostages to Zionists.”

The drawings were recently reprinted in other European publications.