Cleric Offers Money To Kill Cartoonist

A Pakistani cleric offered a 1.5 million rupee reward and a car for anyone who kills the Danish cartoonist who drew Prophet Muhammad, while another Islamist leader was put under house detention, amid fears of more deadly demonstrations Friday, officials said.

Protests sparked by the Muhammad caricature continue in numerous cities around the globe. In Pakistan, thousands of security forces have been deployed to prevent unrest.

Police have arrested 125 protesters for violating a ban on rallies in eastern Pakistan and arrested 30 others after firing tear gas to disperse a protest in the southern city of Karachi.

Mohammed Yousaf Qureshi, prayer leader at the historic Mohabat Khan mosque in the northwestern city of Peshawar, announced at the mosque and the Jamia Ashrafia religious school that he leads would give a 1.5 million rupee reward and a car for killing the cartoonist of the Prophet pictures that appeared first in a Danish newspaper in September.

Police were ordered to restrict the movement of all religious leaders who might address any rallies and round up religious activists "who could be any threat to law and order," a senior police official said in the main eastern city of Lahore.

In Islamabad, there were about 7,000 protesters Friday, while about 5,000 others took to the streets chanting slogans in the city of Quetta.

In Multan, about 300 police swooped down on 125 protesters who had gathered Friday morning at a traffic circle, chanting, "We are slaves of the prophet," and trampling on a Danish flag, said Sharif Zafar, a police official.

Protesters shouted "Death to Musharraf" as they were bundled into two police buses, referring to Pakistan's leader, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who the Bush administration has called a strong ally in the war on terror.

Zafar said they were being taken to a police station because they were violating a ban on rallies in Punjab - declared after deadly riots in Lahore on Tuesday.

In Karachi, police fired tear gas and swung batons to disperse about 2,000 protesters, many wielding sticks, who blocked the main highway into the southern city, said Alim Jafari, a Karachi police official. The road was cleared and some 30 protesters were detained, he said.

The crackdown follows violent protests in Pakistan this week in which five people died and Western businesses were vandalized and burned. Thousands of security forces were deployed Friday in major cities, also including Rawalpindi, Quetta and Peshawar, in anticipation of more rallies.

Clerics at mosques across the country condemned the cartoons.

"Oh God, please punish those who dared to publish these sacrilegious cartoons ... Give enough power to the Muslim countries and enable them to take revenge," said Qari Saeed Ullah, a prayer leader in Islamabad.

The cartoons first appeared in a Danish newspaper in September and have since been condemned as blasphemous by the Muslim world. One of the drawings shows Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban with an ignited fuse.

In Islamabad, former U.S. President Bill Clinton criticized the cartoons but said Muslims wasted an opportunity to build better ties with the West by holding violent protests.

"I can tell you most people in the United States deeply respect Islam ... and most people in Europe do," he said. Mr. Clinton was visiting to sign an agreement with Pakistan's government on an HIV-AIDS project by his charitable foundation.

Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, chief of the radical group Jamaat al-Dawat, became the first religious leader detained by authorities since protests began in Pakistan early this month.

The group's spokesman Yahya Mujahid said a heavy contingent of police arrived at Saeed's Lahore home on Friday morning and told him he could not go outside. He was due to make a speech in Faisalabad, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) away.

The police official confirmed Saeed had been confined at his home.

Saeed used to lead Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, a militant group closely associated with Jamaat al-Dawat, that was banned by Musharraf four years ago.

Intelligence officials have said scores of members of Jamaat al-Dawat and assorted militant groups joined the Lahore protest on Tuesday and had incited the violence in a bid to undermine Musharraf's government.

Lahore police chief Khawaja Khalid Farooq said 12,000 police and an unspecified number of paramilitary troops were guarding government and foreign installations, mosques, shopping centers, restaurants, cinemas and bus stops.

"There is a ban on rallies and we will not allow any one to violate the ban," he said.

In Karachi, a youth group called Pasban called a strike in the teeming port city, where about 40,000 people joined a peaceful protest Thursday, and Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan's largest Islamic group, also planned rallies there.

Karachi police chief Niaz Ahmed Siddiqi said police and paramilitary troops were patrolling the streets, and all foreign missions and foreign food chains were heavily guarded.