WASHINGTON, Sept 8: The gun-toting pastor of a 50-member Florida church rejected on Wednesday calls by the entire world to rescind his plan to burn 200 copies of the Holy Quran on Sept 11, saying that backing down now would expose America's weakness.

Pastor Terry Jones and his followers appeared before the media, with pistols on their hips, to claim that God had asked them to go ahead with their plan that may further deepen the divide between the Muslim and Western worlds.

“If we do not do it, when do we stop backing down? It's something we need to do, it's a message we need to send,” said Mr Jones.

The leader of this insignificant fundamentalist group that espouses anti-Islam philosophy confirmed that he and his followers would be armed during the event. “We are prepared to give our lives for this,” he said.

Despite their stubbornness, the international community continued to urge the hate-mongers to give up their plan that would disturb the world peace.

The Vatican, the highest religious body of the Christians, denounced the plan as “outrageous and grave”.

The Vatican's Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue said that acts of violence like the 9/11 attacks “cannot be counteracted by an outrageous and grave gesture against a book considered sacred by a religious community”.

A spokeswoman for the European Union's foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton said the EU roundly “condemns” plans for a mass burning of the Holy Book.“On behalf of the United Nations and the whole international community … I would like to express in the strongest possible terms our concern and indeed outrage at the planned burning,” said a UN spokesman.

In Washington, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defence Secretary Robert Gates added their voices to those condemning the Florida pastor.

Mr Gates told his staff that he strongly endorsed the view of the top US commander in Afghanistan Gen David Petraeus that the planned burning of the Holy Book 'is risky and ill-advised”.

Secretary Clinton used a foreign policy talk on Wednesday for slamming the burning plan as “disgraceful and disrespectful”.

“The pastor's plan doesn't represent broader American views on Islam, she said. “It's not who we are.”

Secretary Clinton also slammed Mr Jones's plans on Tuesday night at a State Department Iftar-dinner, saying that she was “heartened by the clear, unequivocal condemnation of this disrespectful, disgraceful act that has come from American religious leaders of all faiths, from evangelical Christians to Jewish rabbis, as well as secular US leaders and opinion-makers”.

In Pakistan, the Oscar winner actress and UN Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie said she had “hardly the words that somebody would do that to somebody's religious book”.

Richard L. Eubank, the national commander of the 2.1 million American Veterans of Foreign Wars, said Pastor Jones “will bring total contempt from the world's fastest-growing religion against the world's oldest democracy”.

“The First Amendment may protect the pastor's right to protest, but nothing is to be gained and everything is to lose from this self-serving act,” he said.

On Tuesday night, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who also supports the plan to build a mosque near Ground Zero, said he too understood how the First Amendment allowed the pastor to go ahead with his plan but noted that the proposed burning could put “our young men and women overseas and America itself in greater danger than it was already”.

The mayor also noted that Pastor Jones would not like the same to be done to his holy books.

US Attorney General Eric Holder called the planned Florida event “idiotic” during a closed-door meeting with a group of Muslim, Christian and Jewish religious leaders.

Mr Holder told the group that no one should have to live and pray in fear and that he planned soon to address the issue publicly.