Lebanon Seeks to Defuse Tensions Over Cartoons

Political and religious leaders in Lebanon sought to calm sectarian tensions today, a day after Islamic extremists set fire to a building housing the Danish embassy and rampaged through a Christian quarter of Beirut.

The demonstrations - which began, as elsewhere in the Islamic world, in protest against cartoons of the prophet Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper - quickly developed into a sectarian crisis in a nation already fraught with religious differences.

Lebanon’s interior minister, Hassan Sabei, resigned late on Sunday after criticism of the failure of the security forces to curb the violence. He said that the protest got out of control because of a hardcore of "infiltrators".

"The one remaining option was an order to shoot, but I was not prepared to order the troops to shoot Lebanese citizens," he said.

Although much of the building housing the embassy was severely damaged by fire, reports suggested the embassy itself, which was on an upper floor, was still intact.

Many people in Lebanon have accused Syria of instigating the violence, and said it was part of a broader campaign by Damascus to sow instability and sectarian division in Lebanon. The Syrian government ran the country as a puppet state until it was forced to pull its troops out last year.

The authorities said that of 200 people arrested after the riot, 76 were Syrian and 35 were Palestinian. Many took this as further evidence of Syrian involvement. In the past year there have been a string of high-profile political assassinations in Lebanon, all blamed on Syria. UN investigators say they believe Syrian intelligence was behind the first and most prominent assassination last year, which killed the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Walid Jumblat, a Druze leader and one of the most outspoken critics of Syria, directly accused the Damascus regime. "It seems that through sending weapons and men and using some Syrian workers they want to say that Lebanon will face chaos as a result of their departure from Lebanon," he wrote in a newspaper commentary.

Sunday’s protest was organized by Lebanon’s Sunni clerical authority and by the Jama&iactute;a Islamiya, a conservative Sunni party linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. Yesterday Asad Harmoush, the head of the party’s political bureau, said he condemned the cartoons but had not intended the demonstration to end in violence.

"We refuse the excuse that this is just freedom of expression. Freedom of the press shouldn’t oppose freedom of belief," he told the Guardian. He said that a group of around 100 people out of a much larger crowd of several thousand were responsible for Sunday’s violence.

"We don’t know who they were. But they obviously intended to cause destruction," he said. "Now we say to the Christians that they are a very dear part of our country and that what harms them harms us and that we sympathize and stand with them."

But there is little doubt that the violence was a serious political setback. "It makes a difficult situation much more precarious," said Paul Salem, a political analyst in Beirut. "People are much more anxious than they were two days ago. This is a very fragile, divided and paralyzed country. It is a sad kind of mess."

Last night, a crowd of Christians and moderate Sunni Muslims, supporters of the late Mr Hariri, marched through the centre of Beirut to a Maronite church that was damaged during Sunday’s riot. They said they wanted to dispel the fear that the divisions in Lebanese society were growing ever deeper.

But some in the crowd were angry. "If Denmark attacked the people of the prophet why didn’t the protesters go and attack them in Denmark? Why do they come here and destroy our churches?" said Roy Abu-Abdou, 19, a member of the student wing of the Lebanese Forces, a former Christian militia.

"If they attack us again, especially our religious places, the consequences will be very serious," said Safwat Said, 22, another Lebanese Forces student.

Others were more cautious. "No matter how hard others try to create tension, the Lebanese will never make war with each other again," said Charbil Moussa, 20, a student leader of the Christian Phalangist party.