Angela Merkel slams US pastor’s Quran-burning plan
By DPA, IANSWednesday, September 8, 2010
POTSDAM - German Chancellor Angela Merkel Wednesday described as “abhorrent” plans by a US pastor to burn copies of the Quran on the ninth anniversary of the Sep 11, 2001, terrorist attack.
“Honestly, I find it crass, disrespectful, even abhorrent. Just plain wrong,” she said. “Freedom is permanently, and for everyone, bound up with responsibility.”
Merkel made the comments at the M100 Media Colloquium in Potsdam, where she was to present Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard with the M100 Media Prize. Westergaard controversially portrayed the Prophet Mohammed wearing a bomb in his turban in 2005.
Terry Jones, who leads an evangelical congregation of just 50 people at the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, proclaimed Saturday “International Burn a Quran Day.” The proposal has generated widespread condemnation in the US and abroad.
