Middle East News
Danish legislators cancel Iran visit over controversial cartoons
By DPA
Feb 16, 2008, 14:43 GMT

Copenhagen - The Danish parliament's Foreign Policy Committee has cancelled for the second time a planned visit to Tehran over the two countries' ongoing dispute over controversial cartoons of the Muslim prophet Mohammed, sources in Copenhagen said on Saturday.

The legislators reacted to a Thursday move by Tehran calling on the government in Copenhagen to take action against the renewed publication of the cartoons first printed in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in September 2005.

Iran had also called on the committee to distance itself from the cartoons during its visit scheduled for the beginning of next week.

The legislators, however, have rejected the demand.

Danish papers had reprinted the two-year-old sketches in reaction to an alleged murder plot against one of the cartoonists involved in the dispute.

The reprinting of the cartoons then prompted the Iranian government to call the Danish ambassador to Tehran and renew its protest at 'such renewed offences.'

At the beginning of 2006, demonstrators in the Iranian capital attacked the diplomatic representation of the Scandinavian country. The Iranian authorities had not done anything to prevent the attacks.