GENEVA, June 21: Denmark, shaken by protests in the Muslim world over anti-Islam cartoons, said on Wednesday it wanted to work more closely with Islamic states.

In a speech to the new U.N. Human Rights Council, Foreign Ministry official Michael Zilmer-Johns said freedom of expression ‘should be exercised in a spirit of respect for religious and other beliefs and convictions’.

He told the 45-member Council — where Muslim countries are pressing for action against defamation of religion — that Denmark wanted to ‘strengthen cooperation with the Organisation of Islamic States (OIC) in the United Nations’.

Soon after his speech, an OIC representative told the Council that action was needed to halt ‘the tide of defamation of Islam’ and ‘the rise in Islamophobia and stereotyping of Muslims’.

“The Human Rights Council should take action to combat defamation of all religions,” said the representative.

The cartoons, first published in a Danish newspaper last September and then reprinted in other parts of Europe and the United States after protests began in December, were denounced by Muslims as blasphemous.—Reuters