Koran burning an Al-Qaeda 'recruitment bonanza': Obama

GAINESVILLE, Thursday

US President Barack Obama warned a Florida church's plan to burn Korans would bolster Al-Qaeda Thursday as the church at the centre of the storm defied a growing chorus of global outrage.

In his first reaction to the planned torching by the evangelical church on Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Obama said it would be a "recruitment bonanza" for the Islamists behind the plane bombings.

"You know, you could have serious violence in places like Pakistan or Afghanistan," Obama told ABC television in an interview.

"This is a recruitment bonanza for Al Qaeda," Obama said.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari also condemned the plan as "despicable" while his Indonesian counterpart, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said it would torpedo attempts to reconcile Muslims and the West.

"Indonesia and the US are building or bridging relations between the Western world and Islam. If the Koran burning occurs, then those efforts will be useless," Yudhoyono, leader of the world's biggest Muslim nation, wrote in a letter to Obama.

Even Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who sparked Muslim outrage in 2006 with a drawing of the Prophet Mohammed, said the plans by the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, to burn the Koran went too far.

But with condemnation raining down from top US officials, the military, the Vatican and other religious and world leaders, the church refused to halt plans to torch the Islamic holy book on Saturday.

"As of this time we have no intention of cancelling," Pastor Terry Jones told a press conference here Wednesday, adding his evangelical church had received numerous messages of support.

Jones had indicated he was praying for guidance on whether to go ahead with the incendiary event after warnings from US Afghanistan commander General David Petraeus that US and allied troops could be targeted in revenge.

"We understand the general's concerns and we are still considering it," Jones said, but swiftly added he had been contacted by a special forces soldier who told him "the people in the field are 100 percent behind us."

Petraeus renewed his public opposition to the plan Wednesday, telling NBC the act could be as harmful as the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq, in which images of naked prisoners abused by Americans went viral in 2004.

The Koran-burning images would "be in cyberspace forever, they'd be non-biodegradable," Petraeus warned.

After his press conference Wednesday, Jones reportedly met inside his church with a Florida imam, in a sign that the renegade pastor might be willing to tone down or even cancel his event.