March 4, 2006	Saturday	Safar 3, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, March 3: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said on Friday the government would start a legal process against newspapers in western countries which published blasphemous caricatures by evoking their constitutional rules and laws against publication of such material.

Addressing a Tahaffuze Shan-i-Risalat Conference organised by the ruling Pakistan Muslim League at the PM’s secretariat, Mr Aziz said there would be no compromise on national interests in talks that the government leaders, including President Pervez Musharraf, would hold with any heads of state or government.

He enumerated steps the government had taken on the issue of blasphemous cartoons.

“We as Muslims cannot tolerate anything which put our beloved Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) into disrespect and we will continue to press European countries to take action against publishers of the blasphemous material,” the prime minister emphasised.

Pakistan, he said, desired to take a united stand at the level of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) and it had sought an immediate meeting of the OIC’s foreign ministers in this regard.

He said the country wanted an international law against publication of material hurting religious sentiments of followers of any faith and if such laws existed in Europe ‘we would certainly like to evoke them and seek trial of violators’.

The prime minister regretted the opposition’s refusal to be part of a parliamentary delegation that would travel to Brussels next week to discuss the issue with EU officials. He urged the opposition to reconsider its decision.

He criticised the elements who had defamed Islam by resorting to violence during anti-cartoon demonstrations and said that arrangements had been made to prevent such incidents in future.

Earlier, Dr Shirin Mazari, director-general of the Pakistan Institute of Strategic Studies, mentioned various legal remedies available in most European countries against publication of blasphemous material.

She said that several countries, including Germany, France, New Zealand and Netherlands, had constitutional provisions to punish blasphemers.

Dr Mazari said that Muslim countries should also try, under their law, publishers of blasphemous cartoons to bring them to justice.

PML secretary-general Mushahid Hussain Syed said President Musharraf would raise the blasphemy issue and need for an international law to curb such incidents in his meeting with US President George Bush on Saturday.

He pointed to double standards of the West on the issue of blasphemous cartoons. He said the Danish newspaper which had published the material had refused to publish similar material about Christianity in 2003.

Similarly, he said, the author of an article about holocaust had been jailed for three years.