AP: Iran has agreed to compensate Denmark for damage to the Danish Embassy in Tehran during fiery protests last year over the publication of Prophet Muhammad cartoons, the Danish foreign minister said Wednesday.
Associated Press
By KATIE RICE
Associated Press Writer
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) – Iran has agreed to compensate Denmark for damage to the Danish Embassy in Tehran during fiery protests last year over the publication of Prophet Muhammad cartoons, the Danish foreign minister said Wednesday.
Both sides were still working out the amount to be paid, Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller.
The 12 cartoons first published in Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and reprinted in a range of Western media triggered massive protests in the Muslim world, where the drawings were seen as blasphemous. An angry mob attacked the Tehran embassy with rocks and firebombs in February 2006.
Similar attacks occurred in Lebanon and Syria, and Denmark has requested a total of $618,000 in compensation from the three countries.
After a meeting with his Iranian counterpart Wednesday, Moeller said the Iranians had partially agreed to the Danish demands.
“It’s the obligation of the Iranian government to protect the embassies … and it’s good that the Iranian government accepts this,” Moeller told reporters in Copenhagen. “Now it’s a question of figures and I hope we find a good result for all of us.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was less committal, however, saying at a joint news conference that “those who have been the cause of such problems” should pay. But he added that “we have to manage and find solutions” to the issue.
Lebanon has agreed to pay $127,000 – about 60 percent of the sum Denmark asked for – but Iran and Syria had so far refused.
