June 04, 2008	Wednesday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 29, 1429

COPENHAGEN, June 3: Denmark’s foreign minister led a sombre memorial in Copenhagen for victims of a deadly suicide attack that rocked the Danish embassy in Pakistan.

Under a Danish red-and-white flag flying at half mast, Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller and other Foreign Ministry staff observed a minute of silence at noon in memory of at least six people killed in Monday’s attack.

“On behalf of me and the government I want to express my deepest condolences and sympathy with the victims,” Moeller was quoted as saying as the ceremony began.

“The terror will be conquered. We will not give up,” he said, insisting that Denmark was “not without friends. The world is showing us solidarity.” None of the four Danes stationed at the embassy in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad were injured in the attack, but one Danish citizen of Pakistani origin died there.

Two Pakistani employees were killed, while two others were hurt in the attack, which prompted Danish intelligence service PET to raise the threat level against the Scandinavian country’s interests abroad.

There is “a significant and recognised terrorist threat” against Danes in places “where groups linked to the Al Qaeda network are active, especially in North Africa, in the Middle East and in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” PET warned.

No one has claimed responsibility for the bombing, which was the fourth attack on a Danish embassy since a crisis in 2006 over the Danish publication of cartoons that angered the Muslim world.

But Pakistani investigators believe it was carried out by Taliban militants in Pakistan enraged over the caricatures. Danish authorities refused to comment on that theory.

The Danish Muslim Council said on Tuesday it was “deeply marked and shocked” by the attack.

“Such a disgraceful act draws the Muslim Council’s disgust and cannot be justified by any motive,” council spokesman Zubair Butt Hussain said in a statement.—AFP