Koran burning outrage builds as Muslims mark Idd

KABUL

Thousands of rock-pelting Afghans assaulted a NATO military outpost on Friday as fury built across the Muslim world against a US pastor's threats to immolate the Koran on the anniversary of 9/11.

In a turbulent start to the festival of Eid al-Fitr, when Muslims worldwide mark the end of the Ramadan fasting month, leaders of countries including Afghanistan and Indonesia issued dire warnings against the provocative act.

Radical Florida evangelist Terry Jones issued a heavily conditioned offer to call off his event, which he had planned for Saturday's ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks in protest at the "evil of Islam".

"We have heard that in the US, a pastor has decided to insult Korans. Now although we have heard that they are not doing this, we tell them they should not even think of it," Afghan President Hamid Karzai said.

"By burning the Koran they cannot harm it. The Koran is in the hearts and minds of one and a half billion people. (But) insulting the Koran is an insult to nations," Karzai said in an Eid message.

The commander of US-led forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, the UN mission in Afghanistan and leading aid organisations have all said the burning will endanger the lives of Afghans and foreigners if it goes ahead.

Thousands of protesters threw rocks at a small NATO-run base in the remote town of Fayzabad, capital of Badakhshan province in northeast Afghanistan, after traditional prayers for Eid, police said.

"They numbered in their thousands, it is a big crowd," provincial deputy police chief Sayed Hassan Jafary told AFP.

"People almost from all city mosques gathered," he said, adding that the crowd chanted "death to America" and threw rocks at the German-run military base in the city.

The crowd demanded authorities give them an American flag "so they can burn it and end the demonstrations", Jafary said. "But we don't have an American flag."

As thousands of Afghans rallied at protests across the country, clerics voiced their disgust, with imam Noor Zaman of Kabul's Hazrat Mustafah mosque telling worshippers: "Those who threaten to burn the Koran must know that they will set their own nations alight."

In neighbouring Pakistan, hundreds of protesters gathered in the central city of Multan to torch US flags.

"We have heard that they have postponed the plans to burn the Holy Koran, but it is not enough. We will continue to raise our voice so that it never happens again," cleric Mufti Hidayatullah Pasroori said in an address to the protestors.

Jones said on Thursday he was putting his event on hold and would cancel it if a planned Islamic cultural centre near Ground Zero in New York is relocated.

The imam leading the New York project has denied any quid-pro-quo deal with Jones to move the planned centre, prompting the Florida pastor to threaten afresh to go ahead with the burning.

There have also been several protests by Islamists in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority country, which has suffered years of extremist violence.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono lashed out anew against Jones and his tiny evangelical denomination, located in Gainesville, Florida, a day after calling on US President Barack Obama to intervene.

"This threatens peace and international security. This is something that endangers harmony among religious people," Yudhoyono said in a nationally televised address marking the end of Ramadan.

"I'm of course aware of the reported cancellation of the deplorable act by Terry Jones. However, none of us can be complacent until such a despicable idea is totally extinguished," he said.

The governments of Pakistan and India, which after Indonesia have the world's biggest Muslim populations, have added their voices to a chorus of global outrage against Jones.

Najib Razak, prime minister of Muslim-majority Malaysia, warned Friday the fraught relationship between the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds would enter "a very dangerous chapter" if the burning went ahead.

"I hope the pastor will have a change of heart because by that single act of abhorrence... it will ignite the feelings of Muslims throughout the world, the consequences of which I fear would be very, very costly," he told reporters.