WASHINGTON, Feb 8: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday accused Iran and Syria of stoking Muslim anger against the West over the cartoon controversy.

“Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and to use this to their own purposes and the world ought to call them on it,” Ms Rice said at a joint news conference with Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

She said nothing justified the violence that had resulted worldwide from the cartoons and appealed to governments to urge calm.

“There are governments that have used this opportunity to incite violence,” she added, referring to Syria and Iran.

The United States is on a collision course with Iran over its suspected nuclear weapons program and was instrumental in getting the UN’s nuclear watchdog to report Iran to the UN Security Council.

The White House has blamed Syria for not protecting the Danish and Norwegian embassies that were torched by protesters angered by the cartoons.

Chirac slams French media: French President Jacques Chirac on Wednesday accused newspapers printing the blasphemous cartoons of ‘provocation’ as yet another French publication put the contentious caricatures on its pages.

“Anything that can hurt the convictions of another, particularly religious convictions, must be avoided. Freedom of expression must be exercised in a spirit of responsibility,” Mr Chirac told his cabinet, according to a government spokesman.

“I condemn all manifest provocation that might dangerously fan passions,” he said.

The statements were made after the satirical French weekly Charlie Hebdo printed all 12 of the controversial cartoons first published by a Danish newspaper, as well as a new front-page caricature of its own.

Charlie Hebdo said it sold 400,000 copies in several hours on Wednesday — four times its normal circulation.

The issue hit newsstands the day after a French court refused to grant an injunction to Muslim organisations that tried to have it banned for inciting racial and religious hatred.

Several other French newspapers, including Le Monde, Liberation and France-Soir, have already printed some of the caricatures in a show of solidarity with the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Other European publications have done likewise.

The French president stressed that his criticism was not an abdication of his country’s adherence to freedom of expression but rather a call for the principle not to be abused.

“On the issue of the caricatures and the reactions they have provoked in the Muslim world, I want to say that, if freedom of expression is one of the foundations of the (French) republic, the latter relies also on the values of tolerance and the respect of all beliefs,” he said.

Mr Chirac said he condemned the violent attacks directed against French, Danish and other European nationals and diplomatic missions in Muslim countries in recent days and noted that ‘under international law, governments are responsible for the safety of foreign people and property established on their territory’.

He also directed his government to be ‘especially vigilant’ as to the safety of French citizens abroad. —AFP