Danes Urged to Leave Indonesia

Denmark has warned its citizens to leave Indonesia after reports of a "significant and imminent" threat from militants in the continuing storm over caricatures of the prophet Muhammad. The warning came as the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, said she feared that protests in the Muslim world could "spin out of control".

The Danish foreign ministry issued a statement saying: "There is concrete information that indicates that an extremist group actively will seek out Danes in protest at the publication of the Muhammad drawings." It added that "significant and imminent danger" existed in eastern Java and that this could spread elsewhere.

The Danish ambassador to Jakarta and his staff left on Saturday, and Danes living in west Java said they had heard that militants planned to "sweep" cities for Danes.

In Washington, Ms Rice addressed the issue on ABC television. "If people continue to incite it, it can spin out of control," she said of the violent protests. "Everybody understands that there’s a sense of outrage ... in the Muslim world. But you don’t express your outrage by going out and burning down embassies... You express [it] peacefully."

In Denmark, an opinion poll showed a jump in support for the leading far-right party. Support for the Danish People’s party, the country’s third largest, had risen by 3.6% from last month to 17.8%. The party is a key ally of Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s centre-right government.

The DPP has been highly critical of local Muslim leaders, accusing them of spreading anti-Danish propaganda across the Islamic world. The poll was conducted early last week as the crisis over the cartoons deepened and was published yesterday by Jyllands-Posten, the daily that sparked the controversy after it printed the 12 Muhammad cartoons in September.

Last week, Denmark evacuated its embassy staff in Iran and Syria after threats were made against them. Protests against the cartoons continued in several cities around the world yesterday.