Pakistan and Afghanistan yesterday braced for fresh protests over the alleged desecration of the Koran at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, as Washington moved to calm Muslim anger over the report.
The main Islamic alliance in Pakistan, a key US ally in the war on terror, said its workers would hold peaceful rallies after Friday prayers from mosques in cities and towns across the country.
The multi-party Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, or United Action Front, staged demonstrations in two major cities on Thursday where hundreds of people condemned the alleged desecration reported by US magazine Newsweek last week.
PHOTO: AP
"We want to give a clear message to the US that Muslims will not tolerate insults to their faith and values," the alliance's spokesman Shahid Shamsi told reporters.
The top leader of the alliance, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, has written letters to Islamic organizations in different countries to collectively demonstrate their anger at the Guantanamo Bay allegations.
The US has promised an inquiry and action against soldiers who allegedly defiled copies of the Koran by leaving them in toilet cubicles and even stuffing one down a toilet to rattle Muslim prisoners.
Speaking in Sydney, Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri called for severe punishment for any US soldiers proved to have been involved in any abuse of the Koran.
"I have no doubt that the entire Muslim world is outraged. So I urge the United States administration to take very strong action against the culprits."
"Even the worst enemy of the United States could not harm the image of the US in the Muslim world as effectively as they've done if this is correct," he said.
In Afghanistan officials said yesterday that police and security forces were on high alert after seven people died and nearly 80 others were wounded in three days of violent clashes between protestors and government forces.
Two protesters were killed on Thursday when gunfire broke out as police stopped them marching into the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad from a district just to the northwest.
On Wednesday four people died also in Jalalabad when police opened fire to control a mob that torched the buildings of several aid agencies, the Pakistani consulate and the governor's house. One person died and four were wounded when rioters attacked a police station in Wardak province, which borders Kabul, on Thursday. A total of 10 of the 32 Afghan provinces were affected.
Troops and police patrolled the streets of a number of key Afghan cities ahead of Friday prayers.
The provincial governor had held talks with tribal chiefs, shopkeepers and religious leaders in Jalalabad urging them to help calm the situation. Police spread out across Pakistan to ward off disturbances.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice used an appearance before a Senate committee on Thursday to make a special statement "directly to Muslims in America and throughout the world."
"Disrespect for the holy Koran is not now, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever be, tolerated by the United States. We honor the sacred books of all the world's great religions. Disrespect for the holy Koran is abhorrent to us all," she said, saying action would be taken if reports were true.
But the head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, told a Pentagon press conference no evidence had been found to back the claims.
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