US pastor cancels scheduled burning of Koran

The leader of a small Florida church with an anti-Islam philosophy said last night he was cancelling plans to burn copies of the Koran tomorrow.

Pastor Terry Jones said he decided to cancel his protest because the leader of a planned Islamic Centre near ground zero in New York had agreed to move its controversial location.

Mr Jones’s plans to burn Islam’s holiest text tomorrow had sparked an international outcry.

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President Barack Obama, the top United States general in Afghanistan and several Christian leaders had urged Mr Jones to reconsider his plans.

They said his actions would endanger US soldiers and provide a strong recruitment tool for Islamic extremists.

Mr Jones’s protest also drew criticism from religious and political leaders from across the Muslim world.

Mr Jones said he had called off the book-burning after he agreed to meet the imam of a proposed mosque in New York, close to the site of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

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He claimed the imam had agreed to change the location of the mosque.

“Our thought was, the American people do not as a whole want the mosque at the ground zero location, that if they were willing to either cancel the mosque at the ground zero location or if they were willing to move that location, if they were willing to move it away from that location, we would consider that a sign from God,” he said last night.

Mr Jones said he would accompany a local imam to New York tomorrow to meet Imam Rauf.

“He has agreed to move the location. That of course cannot happen overnight but he has agreed to move that,” he said.

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“The American people do not want the mosque there and of course Muslims do not want us to burn the Koran.

“We have agreed to cancel our event on Saturday and on Saturday I will be flying up there to meet with him.”

But BBC News 24 reported last night that the developers of the Ground Zero site had said in a statement that there were no plans to move the mosque.

Earlier Mr Obama made a direct appeal to Mr Jones to halt his plans to burn the Koran, warning he was putting the lives of innocent Americans in danger and would only boost support for terrorism.

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Mr Obama called the plan a “stunt”. In an interview on ABC’s Good Morning America he said the nation was built on principals of “freedom and religious tolerance” and what Mr Jones proposed was “completely contrary to our values as Americans”.

“This could increase the recruitment of individuals who’d be willing to blow themselves up in American cities or European cities,” he added.

Outside the US, political leaders joined the chorus of disapproval, urging the church leader not to go ahead.

In London, Foreign Secretary William Hague called the clergyman’s plans “selfish and provocative in the extreme”.

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In a statement, Mr Hague, MP for Richmond, said the plan was “offensive not just to Muslims but to all supporters of religious freedom and tolerance worldwide”.

Demonstrations against the planned burning continued to spread throughout the Muslim world.

About 200 lawyers and protesters marched and burned a US flag in the central Pakistani city of Multan, demanding Washington halted the burning of the Muslim holy book.

“If Koran is burned, it would be beginning of destruction of America,” read one English-language banner held up by the demonstrators, who chanted “Down with America!”

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n TycoonDonald Trump is offering to buy out one of the major investors in the partnership that controls the New York site scheduled for the 13-storey Islamic centre and mosque.

The businessman told Hisham Elzanaty he would buy his stake in the building for 25 per cent more than whatever he paid.

He said he was making the offer to end an inflammatory and highly-divisive situation. But a lawyer for the investor said the offer was “just a cheap attempt to get publicity”.