Denmark criticizes Dutch Koran film at EU meeting
BRDO, Slovenia (Reuters) - A Dutch film accusing the Koran of stirring violence is unfair to the world's Muslims and may provoke confrontation, Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moller said on Friday.
"I do not agree with the film because you cannot say 1.3 billion Muslims are potential terrorists," Moller told reporters during a meeting of the European Union's 27 foreign ministers.
The film by Dutch extreme-right parliamentarian Geert Wilders, launched on Thursday, urges Muslims to tear out "hate-filled" verses from the Koran. It starts and finishes with a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad with a bomb under his turban, one of a series originally published in Danish newspapers.
Titled "Fitna", an Arabic term sometimes translated as "strife", the movie intersperses images of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and Islamist bombings with quotations from the Koran, Islam's holy book.
"If you only come up with provocations, you will reach those who want to be provoked and those who then want to use this provocation to inflame the situation instead of having cooperation," said Moller, whose country in 2006 was hit by boycotts and international protests over the Prophet cartoons.
Many EU ministers commented on the film at a meeting in the Slovenian country resort of Brdo, some expressing concern about its impact, diplomats said.
"It is very important that we hold fast and firm to European values about the freedom of speech," said British Foreign Secretary David Miliband. "But that we also recognize that ... there are legal and judicial systems that ensure that that freedom is not used to incite religious or racial hatred."
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden last week threatened the EU with unspecified reprisals over the Mohammad cartoons, one of which was republished by newspapers in February after Denmark arrested three men on suspicion of planning to kill the author.
(Reporting by Marcin Grajewski and Marja Novak; editing by Paul Taylor and Mark Trevelyan)
