Rice: Iran, Syria Behind Cartoon Riots

Meanwhile, Bush Calls For An End To Protests Of Muhammad Drawings

(CBS/AP) 

A prominent Iranian newspaper, Hamshahri, invited artists to enter a Holocaust cartoon competition, saying it wanted to see if freedom of expression — the banner under which many Western publications reprinted the prophet drawings — also applied to Holocaust images. Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the Muhammad caricatures, said it will not publish the cartoons.

The Afghan protesters set fire to three fuel tankers that were waiting to deliver gas to the base, Malakhail said. He said U.S. troops fired warning shots into the air.

A U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Mike Cody, said he had no details on the incident.

Eleven people have been killed in the past week as thousands have taken to the streets in a dozen Afghan cities and towns to march against the cartoons, which have been reprinted in various European media after first appearing in a Danish newspaper in September. In a small protest Wednesday,
hundreds of university students marched peacefully through the capital, chanting "Death to the Danish! Death to Americans!"

Meanwhile, Islamic organizations called for an end to the deadly rioting across the Muslim world over drawings of the Prophet Muhammad.

"Islam says it's all right to demonstrate but not to resort to violence. This must stop," said senior cleric Mohammed Usman, a member of the Ulama Council, Afghanistan's top Islamic organization. "We condemn the cartoons but this does not justify violence. These rioters are defaming the name of Islam."

Other members of the council went on radio and television Wednesday to appeal for calm. It followed a statement released by the United Nations, European Union and the world's largest Islamic group on Tuesday also urging an end to violence.

Elsewhere on Wednesday, about 300 Palestinians attacked an international observer mission in the West Bank city of Hebron and tried to set one of the buildings on fire in a protest against the cartoons.

Sixty members of the mission were inside at the time, said Gunhild Forselv, a spokeswoman for the Temporary International Presence in Hebron, or TIPH, which serves as a buffer between Israeli settlers and Palestinians in the volatile city.

Eleven Danish members of TIPH left more than a week ago after protests against the cartoons began sweeping across the Muslim world, Forselv said.

The protesters chased away outnumbered Palestinian police stationed outside the mission, Forselv said. Reinforcements were called in to quell the disturbance.

Indonesia's foreign minister said Wednesday that radical groups around the world were exploiting public anger over the cartoons.

"The cartoons have hurt the Islamic community, so it has added to ammunition for (global) radical groups to exploit the situation and the whole thing has got out of proportion," Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda told reporters.

Muslims also demonstrated for the third straight day in Indian-controlled Kashmir. In Turkey, police using armored vehicles blocked some 500 ultranationalist Turks from reaching the Danish Embassy and the demonstrators dispersed peacefully.

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©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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