Fresh protests erupted across Asia and the Middle East on Monday over caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad, despite calls by world leaders for calm after Danish diplomatic missions were set ablaze in Lebanon and Syria.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed alarm and urged restraint, but oil giant Iran said it had cut all trade ties with Denmark because of the cartoons and vowed to respond to "an anti-Islamic and Islamophobic current."

"All trade ties with Denmark were cut," Iranian Commerce Minister Massoud Mirkazemi was quoted by the Iranian student news agency ISNA as telling a news conference.

He said Iran would stop any Danish goods from entering its customs areas from Tuesday. Iran imports some US$280 million worth of goods a year from Denmark.

The announcement came as protesters threw petrol bombs at the Danish embassy in Tehran and tried to break into the compound on Monday night in a protest against the cartoons.

Chanting "God is Greatest" and "Death to America" some 1,000 people rammed the metal gate to the embassy, which sits behind a high wall in northern Tehran. Police drove them back with teargas and arrested some, a Reuters correspondent said.

Firefighters were seen trying to put out a fire inside the compound, apparently caused by a firebomb.

Earlier on Monday, about 200 people pelted the embassy of EU president Austria with petrol bombs and stones over the cartoons and Iran's nuclear confrontation with the West.

Denmark has been the focus of Muslim rage as the images, one showing the Prophet with a turban resembling a bomb, first appeared in a Danish daily and Gulf Muslims have stepped up a boycott of Danish goods.

The furor has developed into a clash between press freedom and religious respect. Depicting the Prophet is prohibited by Islam but moderate Muslims, while condemning the cartoons, have expressed fear about radicals hijacking the affair.

Enraged Muslims again took to the streets. A 14-year-old boy was shot dead by police when a protest in northeastern Somalia turned violent on Monday, residents and hospital sources said.

In Afghanistan, one protester was killed in clashes with police. Another person died at the weekend when flames forced him to jump from the burning Danish consulate in Beirut.

In Algiers, Islamists burned Danish and U.S. flags during a rare sit-in protest by about 2,000 people held under the watchful eyes of plain-clothed policemen on Monday.

Ukraine became the latest country where papers published the cartoons, joining Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Hungary, New Zealand, Poland, the United States, Japan, Norway, Malaysia and Australia, Jordan and Yemen.

Yemen closed down a small weekly and ordered its editor held on Monday for reprinting the cartoons, Saba news agency said.

Annan, on a visit to Dubai, appealed for calm.

"I urge all who have authority or influence in different communities ... to engage in dialogue and build a true alliance of civilizations, founded on mutual respect," he said.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy also called on Arab countries "to talk with moderation" about the cartoons.

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The leader of al Muhajiroon, an Islamist group banned in Britain, called for executing those who insult the Prophet.

"In Islam, God said, and the messenger Mohammad said, whoever insults a prophet, he must be punished and executed," Omar Bakri Mohammad told BBC radio by telephone from Beirut.

Britain issued a stern warning after some protesters marched in London with placards threatening beheadings and bloodshed.

"The attacks on the citizens of Denmark and the people of other European countries are completely unacceptable," it said in a statement.

Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini on Monday said violent protests sweeping Muslim countries over the cartoons have been deliberately encouraged by Islamist militants. "We're sitting on a powder keg," he told an RAI television talk show.

Moderate Muslims as well as Western leaders condemned the weekend violence and calls to arms and urged calm.

"With growing concern, we are witnessing the escalation in disturbing tensions," the prime ministers of Turkey and Spain said in the International Herald Tribune.

"We shall all be the losers if we fail to immediately defuse this situation, which can only leave a trail of mistrust and misunderstanding between both sides in its wake," Tayyip Erdogan and Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said in the joint article.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for dialogue between Islam and the West.

"The events as we have seen them unfolding are another calling for us to face that dialogue and to assure ourselves of our own values, but also to articulate them clearly and responsibly," she told public broadcaster ZDF on Monday evening.

Iran, which has withdrawn its ambassador from Denmark said the cartoons "launched an anti-Islamic and Islamophobic current which will be answered."

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki called for an emergency meeting of the world's largest Muslim body, the Organization of the Islamic Conference to discuss Islamophobia in the West.

There was a flurry of public statements as well as behind-the-scenes diplomatic activity to contain the situation.

French President Jacques Chirac telephoned Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Monday to express solidarity with Denmark and to examine how to calm the situation.

EU ambassadors agreed at an emergency meeting in Brussels on Monday to enhance diplomatic contacts to improve dialogue with the Islamic world and ensure security of diplomatic premises.

(Chinadaily.com via agencies February 7, 2006)