Annan heading to Middle East this weekend

UNITED NATIONS --Secretary-General Kofi Annan is making an unexpected trip to Qatar this weekend to try to calm the violent reactions to drawings about the Prophet Muhammad at a meeting to promote religious and cultural understanding.

Annan will address the issues raised by the caricatures and emphasize his opposition to the violent outbursts and the need for tolerance at a previously planned meeting of the U.N.-sponsored Alliance of Civilizations, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Monday.

"He hopes ... to meet with a number of leaders from Europe and from the Islamic world and to discuss with them ways of calming the situation and allowing a constructive dialogue between people of different faiths and traditions based on mutual understanding and respect," Dujarric said.

Annan met the ambassadors of half a dozen countries in the Organization of Islamic Conference on Monday evening to discuss the Feb. 26-28 meeting in Qatar's capital, Doha. They also discussed a proposal by the 57-member group of Muslim nations to include language against "the defamation of religions and prophets" in a draft resolution that would create a new Human Rights Council.

Yemen's U.N. Ambassador Abdullah Alsaidi said afterward that in Doha, Annan plans to meet OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana and the foreign ministers of Turkey, Spain and Austria.

"They will issue a statement that I hope will lead to calming the situation," Alsaidi said.

Annan launched the Alliance of Civilizations initiative to overcome prejudice, misperceptions and polarization between cultures and civilizations -- especially Islam and the West.

The Doha meeting will be the second of some 20 religious, political and cultural experts have tasked with drawing up a list of concrete proposals for the U.N. by the end of 2006 on ways to counter extremism and promote respect between civilizations and cultures.

At the group's first meeting in Spain in November, experts warned that people and nations must rethink how they view and treat each other before it was too late and violence erupted.

Group members include South African Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former Iranian president Mohammed Khatami, former Indonesian foreign minister Ali Alatas, and New York rabbi Arthur Schneier, founder of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation.

Pakistan's U.N. Ambassador Munir Akram said the issue isn't just about the 12 cartoons published in September by the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten, which have sparked rioting and protests against the West.

"It's about respect for each other, respect for religions and cultures -- and I think this is an issue that's been highlighted by the cartoons," he said. "We have to find some way to calm the situation down, make sure it doesn't reoccur, and we have to find the right way to do it."

Jyllands-Posten has apologized for offending Muslims, but has defended its decision to print the cartoons, citing freedom of speech.

One stumbling block in the resolution to create a Human Rights Council is the language proposed by the OIC that would "prevent instances of intolerance, discrimination, incitement of hatred and violence arising from any action against religions, prophets, and beliefs."

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said last week the OIC's proposals were "unacceptable."

General Assembly President Jan Eliasson is expected to issue a new draft this week, and Alsaidi said the secretary-general hopes the resolution will be adopted before the end of the month.

The council is to replace the current Human Rights Commission, which has been widely criticized as an irrelevant body that is powerless to stamp out abuses because its members include some of the worst offenders and it has no mandate to punish violators. Members in recent years have included Sudan, Libya, Zimbabwe and Cuba.

The current draft resolution calls for the 53-member Human Rights Commission to wrap up its work at its next session in Geneva beginning in mid-March.