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Pakistanis defy cartoon rally ban
Police in the Pakistani capital have used tear gas to disperse people who defied a ban on protests over cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad.
Hundreds of protesters armed with sticks and stones evaded cordons and roadblocks to rally in Islamabad.
The cartoons, first published in Denmark in September, have angered Muslims across the world. Several people have died in protests.
Islamic tradition prohibits any depiction of Allah or the Prophet.
An all-day curfew has been imposed in Nigeria's north-eastern city of Maiduguri, where 16 people - mainly from the Christian minority - were killed in riots on Saturday.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has condemned the cartoons, which include one portraying the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban.
Police clampdown
Protests in Pakistan over the last week led to five deaths and prompted the authorities to ban Sunday's demonstration.
Qazi Hussain Ahmad, a senior leader in Pakistan's Islamist opposition alliance, was placed under house arrest before he could travel to Islamabad for the planned march.
Another opposition leader, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, managed to lead a small group of people into the city centre, chanting slogans against the government and its pro-US policies.
Police fired teargas and warning shots to disperse crowds who disobeyed a ban on gatherings of more than five people.
According to the BBC's Barbara Plett in Islamabad, Sunday's demonstration failed to become the mass rally planned by Islamist leaders.
Rather, she says, it represented the best protesters could muster in the face of massive security measures that have effectively shut Islamabad down.
Many roads into the city have been shut and police have been searching vehicles and taking swift action against anyone who appears to be defying the ban.
Protests led by Islamist opposition groups have recently broadened into an attack on President Musharraf, our correspondent says.
Envoy returns
The Danish cartoonist behind some of the drawings has meanwhile said he has no regrets.
Kurt Westergaard - who has been in hiding since a Pakistani cleric offered money for his death - told a Scottish newspaper he had not anticipated the controversy sparked by his work.
He said the cartoons were intended as a protest against double standards in Denmark and Western Europe - a reference to perceived taboos in addressing aspects of Islam.
Denmark's ambassador to Pakistan has returned to his home country, according to the Danish foreign ministry, "because it is practically impossible for him to do his job under the current circumstances".
The Danish embassy in Islamabad was temporarily closed down on Friday.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4729114.stm
The cartoons, first published in Denmark in September, have angered Muslims across the world. Several people have died in protests.
Islamic tradition prohibits any depiction of Allah or the Prophet.
An all-day curfew has been imposed in Nigeria's north-eastern city of Maiduguri, where 16 people - mainly from the Christian minority - were killed in riots on Saturday.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has condemned the cartoons, which include one portraying the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban.
Police clampdown
Protests in Pakistan over the last week led to five deaths and prompted the authorities to ban Sunday's demonstration.
Qazi Hussain Ahmad, a senior leader in Pakistan's Islamist opposition alliance, was placed under house arrest before he could travel to Islamabad for the planned march.
Another opposition leader, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, managed to lead a small group of people into the city centre, chanting slogans against the government and its pro-US policies.
Police fired teargas and warning shots to disperse crowds who disobeyed a ban on gatherings of more than five people.
According to the BBC's Barbara Plett in Islamabad, Sunday's demonstration failed to become the mass rally planned by Islamist leaders.
Rather, she says, it represented the best protesters could muster in the face of massive security measures that have effectively shut Islamabad down.
Many roads into the city have been shut and police have been searching vehicles and taking swift action against anyone who appears to be defying the ban.
Protests led by Islamist opposition groups have recently broadened into an attack on President Musharraf, our correspondent says.
Envoy returns
The Danish cartoonist behind some of the drawings has meanwhile said he has no regrets.
Kurt Westergaard - who has been in hiding since a Pakistani cleric offered money for his death - told a Scottish newspaper he had not anticipated the controversy sparked by his work.
He said the cartoons were intended as a protest against double standards in Denmark and Western Europe - a reference to perceived taboos in addressing aspects of Islam.
Denmark's ambassador to Pakistan has returned to his home country, according to the Danish foreign ministry, "because it is practically impossible for him to do his job under the current circumstances".
The Danish embassy in Islamabad was temporarily closed down on Friday.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4729114.stm
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On Saturday, the federal government imposed a ban on Sunday's Islamabad march after similar protests in Pakistan led to violence in which at least five people have been killed in the past week.
The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), an alliance of six Islamist parties, had said its followers would defy the ban.
Despite police cordons, teargas and warning shots, around 1000 protesters managed to congregate near a central bazaar where they chanted religious and anti-government slogans.
Demonstrators lampooned Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, as a lackey of George Bush, the American president.
"Bush has reared a dog wearing a uniform," they chanted, referring to Musharraf's broken promise to the MMA that he would give up his dual role as president and chief of the armed forces, and to his alliance with Washington in a war on terrorism.
Police security
Police and paramilitary troops patrolled streets in Islamabad, while barbed wire was placed across main routes leading to parliament and elsewhere.
Buses and other vehicles were stopped and searched at entry points into the city, witnesses said.
But around 100 protesters broke through the cordons and were joined by hundreds of others from side streets.
Police fired teargas, and when the protesters retaliated by throwing stones, police responded by firing warning shots into the air and what a local official said were rubber bullets into the crowd. Helicopters later flew over the area.
House arrest
Earlier, on Sunday morning police put Qazi Hussain Ahmed, MMA's president, under house arrest in Lahore before he could travel to Islamabad to lead the march.
Fazul-ur-Rehman, another senior MMA leader, and a group of around 30 followers, including parliamentarians, assembled at one of the main entry points to Islamabad, but were forced to abandon their march after police fired teargas.
Islamist parties have seized on the issue because they say Islam forbids images of Mohammad.
Rehman said: "The whole Pakistani nation will continue and the Muslim world will continue coming on (to) the streets until an apology is offered for this sinister act and a promise made not to repeat it."
MMA supporters burned tyres on roads in the nearby city of Rawalpindi, where police had earlier detained more than 100 activists.
Pakistani protests
Pakistan has issued diplomatic protests over the cartoons published in several, mainly European newspapers.
On Friday, Pakistan recalled its ambassador from Denmark, where the cartoons first appeared.
The Danish Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that its ambassador had come home temporarily, having two days earlier shut the embassy in Islamabad because of the security risk.
Abdul Waheed, a protester, said: "Our rulers should immediately recall ambassadors from countries where these cartoons have been published.
"We don't ask for severance of diplomatic relations but only recall of ambassadors to put pressure on those countries."
The editor of the Danish paper that started the controversy, Jyllands-Posten has apologised, and the apology was printed in Saudi Arabian newspapers on Sunday.
A leading cleric in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar has offered a reward to anyone who kills a Danish cartoonist responsible for the insult.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/513C66F7-51F3-461D-A787-EAEBC45C74EA.htm