"We are now facing a growing global crisis," Danish PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen told a news conference. A Danish paper, Jyllands-Posten, first published the caricatures that have sparked violent protests in Muslim countries.
Muslim protestors shout slogans during a demonstration in Kabul against the publication of the cartoons.
Photo: AP
"Now it has become an international political matter," he said. "I urge calm and steadiness."
Fogh Rasmussen said Denmark was not contemplating changes in its strategy for responding to the spiraling tensions.
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"In Denmark we have a long tradition of solving disagreements through dialogue and that is what the government will do, enter a dialogue," he said.
Outraged Muslim demonstrators, who have set fire to the Danish embassies in Syria and Lebanon and held chaotic protests elsewhere, have demanded the Danish government apologize for the cartoons, which Jyllands-Posten printed in September.
"It is a very unpleasant situation for Danes, we're not used to this," said Rasmussen, who reiterated that Denmark's press freedom culture means the government cannot apologize for what an independent newspaper does.
The newspaper has apologized for offense caused to Muslims, but has defended its printing the drawings as a legitimate exercise in freedom of expression.
Shortly before the news conference, U.S. President George W. Bush called the Danish PM, expressing his solidarity in the face of growing violent protests.
Earlier, the Foreign Ministry said the embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, has been temporarily closed because of fears it would be stormed.
Niels Erik Andersen, Denmark's ambassador to Indonesia, said Muslims groups throughout Indonesia had been burning Danish flags and effigies of Fogh Rasmussen.
"A Muslim organization said it was looking for Danes on the streets," Andersen said on Danish public radio.
Protests, some violent, swirled through the Muslim world Monday while politicians sought diplomatic solutions to the growing and increasingly violent crisis surrounding published caricatures of Islam's Prophet Muhammad.
Lebanon apologized to Denmark after thousands of rampaging Muslim demonstrators set fire to the building housing the Danish mission in Beirut.
The European Union issued stern reminders to 18 Arab and other Muslim countries worldwide that they are obliged under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations to protect foreign embassies, and Austria - which now holds the EU Council presidency, reported calling in a top representative of the Organization of the Islamic Conference to express concerns for the safety of diplomatic missions.
The prime ministers of Spain and Turkey issued a Christian-Muslim appeal for calm, saying "we shall all be the losers if we fail to immediately defuse this situation."
But Turkey's foreign minister said media freedoms cannot be limitless and that hostility against Muslims was replacing anti-Semitism in the West.
About 200 demonstrators in Teheran threw stones at the Austrian Embassy, breaking some windows and starting small fires. The demonstration lasted two hours, with protesters also throwing firecrackers that started the fires. Police quickly extinguished the blazes and stopped some protesters from throwing stones.
In southern Iraq, several thousand Iraqis rallied to demand diplomatic and economic ties be severed with countries in which the caricatures were published. The protest in Kut, 160 kilometers (100 miles) southeast of Baghdad, witnessed the burning of Danish, German and Israeli flags and an effigy of Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Protesters called for the death of anyone who insults Muhammad and demanded withdrawal of 530-member Danish military contingent operating under British control.
Danish Capt. Philip Ulrichsen, of the Qurnah-based contingent, said Danish troops were shot at and targeted by stone-throwing youths on Sunday. A roadside bomb planted in the area was also defused. No soldiers were wounded in any of the incidents.
Several thousand students massed peacefully in Cairo on the campus of al-Azhar University, the oldest and most important seat of Sunni Muslim learning in the world, to protest the drawings.
Police and soldiers in central Afghanistan clashed with protesters. One person died and four wounded.
The main city in Indian-controlled Kashmir came to a standstill as shops, businesses and schools shut down for a day to protest the caricatures. Dozens of Muslim protesters torched Danish flags, burned tires, shouted slogans and hurled rocks at passing cars in several parts of Srinagar.
In the Indian capital of New Delhi, riot police fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse hundreds of students from Jamia University, who chanted slogans and burned a Danish flag.
Muslim leaders in Australia demanded a newspaper there apologize after it published one of the cartoons.
Palestinian police in Gaza City used batons to beat back stone-throwing protesters who gathered outside the European Commission building. About 200 protesters waved green flags symbolizing the Islamic Hamas movement and the yellow flags of the secular Fatah Party.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for an end to violence and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the country would try to use its contacts with Arab countries to cool the violence.
"We cannot allow this argument to become a battle between cultures," Steinmeier said.
Lebanese Information Minister Ghazi Aridi said early Monday that the government had unanimously "rejected and condemned the ... riots," saying they had "harmed Lebanon's reputation and its civilized image and the noble aim of the demonstration."
