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

The planned torching of some 200 Korans comes amid an angry debate over plans to build an Islamic centre in New York close to where the World Trade Center once stood.

Many fear if the Koran burning goes ahead it will further raise anti-Islamic sentiment.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was deeply disturbed by the plans, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel decried them as "abhorrent."

Officials in the small university town of Gainesville -- reluctantly dragged into the global spotlight -- met Wednesday to draw up contingency plans.

City spokesman Bob Woods told AFP that church officials would be violating a ban on open-air burning and would be subject to a 250-dollar fine if they set fire to the books.

But there is little they can do to stop the event from going ahead, protected as it is by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, guaranteeing freedom of speech.