February 23, 2006
The secretary general of the Arab League, Amr Mussa, has said that Europeans and Muslims should develop common guidelines for the press to avoid future "harmful clashes" such as over the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Speaking before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament (EP) in Brussels, Mussa said that "we cannot afford a second, third or fourth incident of this kind". He proposed the joint formulation of principles on how to apply freedom of speech in a responsible manner. Relations between the Arab world and Europe and between Christians and Jews were too important to become the victim "of the caprices of journalists or demonstrators". There was no real conflict between Christianity and Islam, he said, and all problems could be resolved in a climate of tolerance. Questioned by a member of the EP, Mussa also claimed that the citizens of Arab states condemned all acts of anti-Semitism, adding "We Arabs are against all forms of anti-Jewish hatred."
The chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Elmar Brok, and the leader of the European Socialist Party, former Danish prime minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, both rejected Mussa's proposals. Brok said that in a free society it was not possible to prevent the publication of such caricatures. However, it was necessary to prevent that "such incidents are exploited in state action."
