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Lebanese Shiites stage peaceful cartoon protest

A Shiite Muslim veiled woman holds a placard as she walks in the rain with other women wearing bandanas reading ``Here I am at your service, oh messenger of God'' during a march to mark Ashoura in the suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, yesterday. PHOTO: AP

Hundreds of thousands of Shiite Muslims in Lebanon turned a religious ceremony yesterday into a peaceful protest against a series of cartoons in the Western media lampooning the Prophet Mohammad.

The EU sought to calm tension, calling for a voluntary media code of conduct to avoid inflaming religious sensibilities, while the US accused Iran and Syria of deliberately stoking Muslim rage.

The leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrilla group pledged no compromise until there was a full apology from Denmark, where the cartoons first appeared, and European countries passed laws prohibiting insults to the prophet.

"Today, we are defending the dignity of our prophet with a word, a demonstration, but let [US President] George Bush and the arrogant world know that if we have to ... we will defend our prophet with our blood, not our voices," Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, told the crowd.

The annual Shiite mourning ceremonies mark the death of the Prophet's grandson, Imam Hussein, killed in Kerbala in Iraq 1,300 years ago. Security sources put the turnout in Beirut at 400,000 and similar processions are due throughout the day in other Shiite centers; notably in Iraq and Iran.

Publication of the cartoons has incensed Muslims across the world and led to violent protests in which at least 11 people have been killed.

The 25-member EU called for the media to adopt a voluntary code of conduct to avoid a repeat of the furore.

By doing so, "the press will give the Muslim world the message: We are aware of the consequences of exercising the right of free expression," European Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini told the Daily Telegraph newspaper. "We can and we are ready to self-regulate that right."

But the US accused some Muslim countries of pouring gasoline on the flames.

"Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and to use this to their own purposes," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday.

Both countries are at loggerheads with the West and have witnessed attacks on Western embassy buildings.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said there was a lesson to be drawn from the cartoons: "The rights of press freedom are not absolute ... Whatever the faith, we must respect it."
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