Washington/Dubai, September 9
An American pastor’s threat to burn copies of the holy Quran has stirred outrage in Islamic world with kings and presidents of Muslim nations joining hands to condemn the act and asking the US President to intervene to stop it.

Barack Obama to whom the Muslim leaders appealed joined them in condemning the planned act, saying, “It will amount to recruitment bonanza for Al-Qaida.” “This could lead to serious violence in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Obama said, hoping that Rev Terry Jones listens to the pleas of the world.

Obama told ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’ show that the burning “would increase recruitments of individuals who would be willing to blow themselves up in American cities or European cities.”

Labelling the act as a stunt, Obama said such an act was contrary “to American values which were built on the notion of freedom and religious tolerance”.

Slamming the action, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari warned that the act could inflame Muslim sentiments across the world.

“This outrage would cause irreparable damage to interfaith harmony and also to world peace,” a statement issued by the President’s office said as hours ticked to the threat by a clergyman of a tiny church in Florida to carry out the act on Saturday.

His Interior Minister Rehman Malik dispatched a letter addressed to Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble, asking the agency to stop the “insane” pastor. Protests and demonstrations took place in parts of the country, threatening that if the burning went ahead it would signal the end of America.

The President of the world’s biggest Muslim nation, Indonesia, expressed fears that if the burning went ahead, efforts by both Jakarta and Washington to build a bridge between the Western world and Islam “would end”.

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono wrote to Obama to say that the planned burning could spark “conflict among religions”. Yudhoyono told Obama to personally intervene to stop the outrage.

Florida’s Dove World Outreach Centre is planning to burn copies of the Koran on Saturday’s anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. The Centre’s pastor Terry Jones unmoved by worldwide condemnation has vowed to go ahead with the burning.

US authorities have said there was little they can do to stop the pastor from going ahead as the country’s constitution guarantees freedom of speech.

Malaysia, Bahrain and the UAE branded the act as “heinous” and joined in calls to Washington to stop the event from going ahead.

A Danish cartoonist who sparked Muslim outrage in 2006 by making a drawing of Prophet Mohammad with a bomb for a turban said burning the Koran was going too far.

“Provocation should lead to reflection, to enlightenment, to knowledge. In this case, burning of the Koran, this is really not the case,” said the 75-year-old Kurt Westergaard told a German daily.

All top US and NATO forces commanders in Afghanistan have warned that the act could trigger violence against Western forces in the country. — PTI 

Havana, September 9
Fidel Castro said Cuba's economic model no longer works, a US-based journalist reported on Wednesday following interviews with the former president last week.

Jeffrey Goldberg, a writer for the Atlantic Monthly magazine, wrote in a blog that he asked Castro, 84, if Cuba's model, Soviet-style communism, was still worth exporting to other countries and he replied, "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore."

The comment appeared to reflect Castro's agreement, which he also expressed in a column for Cuban media in April, with his younger brother President Raul Castro, who has initiated modest reforms to stimulate Cuba's troubled economy.

Goldberg said Julia Sweig, a Cuba expert at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in Washington who accompanied him to Havana, believed Castro's words reflected an acknowledgment that "the state has too big a role in the economic life of the country."

Goldberg wrote in a blog on Tuesday that Castro summoned him to Havana to discuss his recent article about the likelihood of conflict between Israel and Iran, with possible US involvement, over Iran's growing nuclear capabilities.

He said Castro criticised Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for anti-Semitism and denying the Holocaust. Castro, since emerging in July from four years of seclusion following intestinal surgery, has become an anti-nuclear weapon crusader expressing concern about the future of the world.

Castro also criticised his own actions during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when he urged the Soviet Union to launch nuclear weapons against the United States, telling Goldberg "it wasn't worth it at all." — Reuters

Moscow, September 9
In an upsurge of militancy in Russia’s Muslim dominated Caucasus, a suicide bomber rammed his car into a central market in Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, killing 16 persons and wounding more than 100.

In one of the worst terror attacks in the volatile region, the attacker exploded his explosive-laden car near the gate of the market, Interfax quoted the local Emergency Situations Ministry.

Officials said at least 16 persons, mostly labourers looking for daily jobs, were killed on the spot including the suicide bomber and more than 130 people injured.

The casualty figures could go up as the condition of more than 80 people rushed to hospital was reported to be critical.

The market and its neighbouring areas have been the target of several bomb attacks in recent years in which scores of people have been killed.

A spokesman for the SKP investigation agency of the prosecutor’s office said the power of the explosive device was equivalent to 30-40 kg of TNT.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin described today’s terror attack as an attempt to sow hatred among the citizens of Russia, while President Dimitry Medvedev sent his top official to coordinate help for the victims.

Vladikavkaz, the capital of the Russian republic of North Ossetia, has been less plagued y violence than other neighbouring Islamic republics in the region such as Chechnya and Dagestan. — PTI 

The private investigator jailed in the News of the World phone tapping scandal, Glenn Mulcaire, planned to write a book which would allege that a detailed synopsis of the memoirs, seen by The Independent, reveals that Mulcaire was prepared to implicate others at the newspaper by stating that, as well as taking instructions from the royal correspondent Clive Goodman, he was also routinely commissioned by executives.

The book, provisionally titled ‘Hear to Here: The Inside Story of the Royal Household Tapes and The Murky World of the Media’, was never published because Mulcaire signed an 80,000 confidentiality agreement with the News of the World after he sued for wrongful dismissal following his conviction.

But Mulcaire, who was paid more than £2,000 a week by the newspaper, did write a five-page synopsis with a would-be author. Due to the gagging order, the document is the only time Mulcaire has explained his actions in his own words.

In the proposal, he claims that he would receive up to 20 calls a year from staff at the News of the World. The assertion matches the findings of Justice Gross, the judge who sentenced Mulcaire at the Old Bailey in January 2007, who said he was satisfied that Mulcaire has dealt with “others at News International” beyond Goodman when he listened to the voicemails of public figures, including Max Clifford, the LibDem MP Simon Hughes and supermodel Elle Macpherson.

In a sample chapter titled “The Approach”, Mulcaire recounts receiving the telephone call, which instructed him to tap the phones of members of the Royal Family. He writes: “It was just one of those normal calls. I’d get around 10 or 20 each year. ‘We’ve got information we want you to look at, get yourself here as soon as you can.’ It was from the News of the World.

In the following chapter, “The Operation”, Mulcaire adds: “I didn’t want to do the assignment. Anything that involves the Royals or the Establishment has me twitchy straight away, but I was under contract and you just have to switch off about the specifics and be professional. That’s what you have to be to be a good private investigator and I considered myself to be among the best.”

Mulcaire’s phone-tapping exploits began to unravel in November 2005 after the publication of a News of the World story, written by Goodman, which revealed that Prince William had “pulled a tendon in his knee”, something only a handful of people knew.

In an outline for a chapter called “The Greed”, Mulcaire explains that he stopped tapping phones for three months after questions were raised about the source of that story. But he eventually continued: “We had the security breach. I wanted to stop there. I knew any more would be pushing [our] luck, but Goodman was hungry. In the end I was given no real choice. He knew I could give him access to a cash cow. One call from me and he could get a royal exclusive. But most importantly he knew I was under contract. I was told in no uncertain terms, stop now and you will never work in the media again. What choice did that give me?”

The News of the World declined to comment on the claims made by Mulcaire in the synopsis. The newspaper denies that there was any “widespread culture of wrongdoing” among its staff. — The Independent