VIENNA, Feb 6: The Austrian presidency of the EU on Monday called on Muslim countries to protect EU nationals from attack by protesters angry at the publication of cartoons.

Austrian diplomats in Damascus, Ramallah and Beirut ‘protested to the governments concerned’, following the violence that erupted in the past few days across the Muslim world, a foreign ministry news release said.

“In the name of the EU, they have demanded that protection for European citizens be ensured and further acts of violence prevented under all circumstances,” it added.

Austria also reminded a list of other countries of their ‘obligations’ to protect the diplomatic missions of EU states, naming Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Morocco, Oman, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the Palestinian Territories.

The statement came as demonstrators in Tehran pelted and smashed several windows of the Austrian embassy and after protesters torched Danish and Norwegian diplomatic missions in Damascus and a Danish consulate in Beirut over the weekend.

Earlier on Monday in Brussels, the European Commission condemned the latest wave of violence by Muslim protesters against the cartoons and urged all sides to return to calm debate.

The commission was ‘aware that the cartoons ... have aggrieved Muslims across the world’, said Johannes Laitenberg, a spokesman for the European Union’s executive arm.

“But no grievance, perceived or real, justifies acts of violence such as perpetrated on the weekend,” he added, saying the EU condemned the weekend violence ‘in the strongest possible terms’.

“It is only through a vigorous but peaceful debate of opinions ... that mutual understanding can be built,” the EU spokesman said.

“That is what is at this point in time needed.”

Ambassadors from the EU’s 25 member states met to discuss the latest protests in Brussels, including being briefed by the main countries involved, primarily Denmark.

Afterwards a spokeswoman for EU foreign policy Javier Solana, who attended the talks, said they had ‘expressed a message of solidarity with the Danes and other delegations whose countries have been targeted by violence’.

“We also voiced a message of continuing diplomacy at all levels ... We have to calm the mood; political and religious leaders have to take this message into account,” said the spokeswoman, Cristina Gallach.

“We want the situation to return to calm, to dialogue and understanding, to escape from a spiral of disagreement and violence,” she added. —AFP