French President Jacques Chirac reacted by condemning "all manifest provocation that might dangerously fan passions," according to a government spokesman.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday also slammed the cartoons -- first published in Denmark and later reproduced in dozens of mainly European papers -- as a provocation, equating them with child pornography.

He called on Denmark to "ask for forgiveness."

In Vienna, the current president of the European Union, Austrian chancellor Wolfgang Schussel, denounced the "spiral of reciprocal provocations and insults" which, he said, fanned the flames of intolerance.

Neither "disparaging caricatures" of Mohammed nor "jokes about the Holocaust have any place in a world where cultures and religions should live side by side in a spirit of mutual respect," he said, alluding to an Iranian newspaper that has launched a contest for cartoons about World War II Nazi campaign to exterminate Jews.

In Pakistan, meanwhile, thousands of protesters burned an effigy of US President George W. Bush Wednesday in a remote Pakistani tribal area, the third day of large-scale demonstrations in different Pakastani cities.

Around 3,000 demonstrators shouting "Allahu Akhbar" (God is great) in Dara Adamkhel, near the Afghan border, accused Bush backing the caricatures.

"Bush is behind this, he heads the gang which is against Islam," Said Wazir, the leader of a local Islamic group called Quami Tehreek, told the crowd.

Bush assured Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Tuesday of his "support and solidarity," as had British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac a day earlier.

In the West Bank city of Hebron, scores of Palestinians hurled stones and bottles Wednesday at the offices of a team of international monitors to protest the cartoons.

And in Ankara, some 500 nationalists protested outside the Danish embassy shouting out anti-Danish slogans, according to police.

Denmark, meanwhile, continued to close diplomatic outposts and ensure the safety of its nationals abroad, pulling out 11 Danish members of a peace-monitoring team in the West Bank, officials said Wednesday.

Its embassies and consulates have been fire-bombed and stormed in Tehran, Beirut and Damascus in recent days.

In Ankara, a lawmaker from Turkey's governing party, Vahit Kiler, announced that the 110-store supermarket chain he owns will boycott Danish and Norwegian products.

The latest deaths in Afghanistan occurred as protestors and police clashed in Qalat, the capital of southern Zabul province.

About 400 protestors hurled stones as they tried to storm the police headquarters, before moving to a US-led military coalition base where they torched four fuel tankers, witnesses and an army commander said.

A provincial official said police had opened fire to control the crowd while witnesses said coalition troops had fired into the air.

Separately about 1,500 people demonstrated in eastern Nangarhar province Wednesday, while in Kabul about 200 men torched the flag of Denmark while chanting "Death to Denmark, Death to America," before dispersing.

Meanwhile British NATO troops who were rushed to the northwestern city of Maymana patrolled the streets the day after demonstrators attacked a camp there run by Norwegian peacekeepers, an assault that led to four deaths.

Unrest has continued in Afghanistan and elsewhere despite repeated calls by the United Nations, Western leaders and the Organization of the Islamic Conference for restraint and dialogue in the row over the drawings.

According to Putin, beginning a two-day visit to Spain, the caricatures -- one of which showed Mohammed with a bomb in his turban -- "widen the gulf between religions." He said Denmark should "ask for forgiveness."

"When we condemn child pornography, we don't hide behind freedom of expression," Putin added.

The satirical French weekly Charlie Hebdo printed all 12 of the controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed on Wednesday, along with an original front-page caricature of its own.

The paper bears the headline "Mohammed stressed out by the fundamentalists" and a cartoon of the prophet with head in hands uttering the words "It's hard to be loved by fools."

Chirac commented later the same day, saying "Anything that can hurt the convictions of another, particularly religious convictions, must be avoided. Freedom of expression must be exercised in a spirit of responsibility," he told his cabinet, according to a government spokesman.

The statements were made after the satirical French weekly Charlie Hebdo printed all 12 of the controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed first published by a Danish newspaper in September, as well as a new front-page caricature of its own.

The paper bears the headline "Mohammed stressed out by the fundamentalists" and a cartoon of the prophet with head in hands uttering the words "It's hard to be loved by fools."

In addition to the 12 cartoons that have sparked fury in the Islamic world, it publishes other drawings poking fun at different religions.

Charlie Hebdo said the initial 160,000 copies it had printed were selling so fast Wednesday that it would proceed with another print-run.

Its issue hit newsstands the day after a French court refused to grant an injunction to Islamic organisations that tried to have it banned for inciting racial and religious hatred.

Several other French newspapers, including Le Monde, Liberation and France-Soir, have already printed some of the caricatures in a show of solidarity with the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, and as a blow for freedom of expression. Other European publications have done likewise.

France has Europe's biggest Muslim population, estimated at six million of the country's 62 million inhabitants, and Chirac is widely viewed as a sympathetic world leader in many Arab countries, particularly in North Africa.

The French president stressed that his criticism was not an abdication of his country's adherence to freedom of expression but rather a call for the principle not to be abused.

"On the issue of the caricatures and the reactions they have provoked in the Muslim world, I want to say that, if freedom of expression is one of the foundations of the (French) republic, the latter relies also on the values of tolerance and the respect of all beliefs," he said.

Chirac said he "condemned" the violent attacks directed against French, Danish and other European nationals and diplomatic missions in Muslim countries in recent days and noted that "under international law, governments are responsible for the safety of foreign people and property established on their territory."

He also directed his government to be "especially vigilant" as to the safety of French citizens abroad.

Angry Muslim mobs in the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere have expressed fury at European representations and cultural offices over the cartoons. In Denmark and France, bomb threats have been made against the offices of newspapers that printed them.

On Wednesday, a team of international observers was forced to pull out of the Palestinian West Bank city of Hebron after its offices came under attack from protesters.

A Paris protest by French Muslims is scheduled to take place on Saturday amid tight police security.

On the heels of “color revolutions” in Georgia and Ukraine, those countries — both of which have prickly relations with Russia — have cozied up to NATO, much to the delight of NATO enthusiasts and Russophobes. NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told Ukrainian leaders in October that NATO’s door “was, is, and remains open” to Ukraine. Less than a week later, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld encouraged the Ukrainian government’s efforts to join the alliance: “Progress has been made [toward accession], and we encourage it.”

By November, Scheffer was using his same line to discuss potential Georgian membership: “Needless to say that NATO’s door is open.” Acknowledging the hot-button dispute between Russia and Georgia over the province of South Ossetia, Scheffer hedged: “NATO is following this, of course, with interest.” Even more brazen, NATO hinted that it would be open to deploying military forces to Nagorno-Karabakh.

NATO boosters ought to close the door of expansion, take a deep breath, and explain what, exactly, NATO’s mission is now. Equally important, they need to justify how it is in America’s self-interest for the alliance to acquire an ever-expanding roster of fragile and unpredictable client states on Russia’s border.

At the end of the Cold War, NATO’s purpose vanished. There was no longer a danger of Russian aggression against the West. Instead of disbanding, however, NATO took up an array of missions entirely unrelated to its original purpose — without bothering to define its new role. Relations between the alliance and Moscow are increasingly testy. NATO antagonized Russia in the late 1990s by circumventing the UN Security Council in attacking Russian ally Serbia. Now the alliance continues to poke at Russia by swallowing up former members of the Soviet bloc as fast as it can.

Advocates of continued NATO expansion express inexplicable surprise when Russia protests. By taking in the Baltic republics as members, NATO is already deeply involved in countries that have historically been well within Russia’s sphere of influence. The alliance seems poised to intrude further, and the Russian bear is beginning to growl. Nikolai Bordyuzha, spokesman for the
Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization, has made Russia’s views plain enough, warning that NATO bases surrounding Russia would constitute “a potential threat to Russia’s security.”

Russia — like any other country — tends to get alarmed when the world’s sole superpower extends security guarantees and military cooperation to countries on its borders. As NATO continues to expand, the United States has been hailing, and in some cases directly supporting, “color revolutions” that have caused instability and chaos in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan. This is a dangerous mix from Moscow’s perspective.

It is also a dangerous mix from America’s standpoint. NATO is much more than a political club. It is a military alliance with serious obligations for the United States. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty proclaims that an attack on one member is an attack on all. That means the United States is obligated to defend every member no matter how small, how militarily and economically insignificant, or how strategically exposed that member may be.

And those obligations go on forever. Therein lies the danger. True, there is little risk of a clash with Russia in the near term. Russia’s military is in no condition to challenge the United States, even in Moscow’s backyard. Moreover, Vladimir Putin has adopted a surprisingly accommodating policy in an effort to secure economic and political benefits from the United States and its allies.

But who knows what Putin’s successor might be like? Who would dare predict the political environment in Russia a decade or a generation from now? All that would be required to trigger a crisis is a Russian president who tires of a neighboring state’s treatment of its Russian inhabitants as second-class citizens and decides that Moscow should rectify that situation by force if necessary. Indeed, a crisis could be triggered if a future Russian president concludes that a Western military presence itself is an intolerable intrusion into what should rightfully be Moscow’s sphere of influence. And a Russian president might well conclude that the United States would not really risk war over South Ossetia or a similar obscure conflict.

We don’t need to treat Russia with kid gloves, but reasonable caution and consideration is in order. Russia has a sound right to wonder about NATO’s motives: Whom, exactly, would Georgia, Ukraine, and other potential member-states be allying militarily with NATO against?

The West can continue to press forward with NATO expansion indefinitely, antagonizing Russia and entering into security guarantees with countries on its border. But that course is unreasonable if we expect Russia’s cooperation on nuclear proliferation, terrorism, or other issues vitally important to America. If the United States values those goals, let alone long-term peace with Russia, it needs to engage Moscow, not unnecessarily antagonize it.

Local police officials quoted by the agency said the blast occurred in the building’s basement, where the base’s kitchen was located and where “supposedly there were gas containers.” Earlier, officials said it was a gas explosion.

Investigators said that according to preliminary data, the blast that caused the building to collapse was caused by a natural gas leak, said Oleg Ugnivenko, a spokesman for the ministry’s southern regional office, The Associated Press reported.

Backing up that conclusion, there were no immediate claims of responsibility for any attack on the barracks. A news item on a Chechen rebel website reported on the gas explosion theory with skepticism but did not suggest outright that militants had targeted it.

According to an interior ministry source quoted by RIA-Novosti, up to 43 people could have been in the wrecked building at the time of the blast.

Alu Alkhanov, the president of the province, said that gas services were partially to blame for the incident. “I am one hundred percent certain that the district gas services had never visited the site, never checked the operation of the gas supply system. We have not seen a single report on such visits,” Alkhanov said in televised comments while he visited the scene.

The prosecutor’s office has launched a probe into breach of fire safety rules and negligence.

The justice department in the northern city of Hamburg said that the decision to release Motassadeq had been made on the basis of a federal court ruling upholding a complaint by the 31-year-old Moroccan.

Motassadeq left the prison in the company of his lawyer on Tuesday evening, according to journalists at the scene.

He had been found guilty in August in a retrial of belonging to a terrorist organization for plotting holy war with fellow Muslim extremists, including three of the September 11 suicide hijackers in New York and Washington.

He was jailed for seven years but both the prosecution and the defense have appealed the sentence.

His lawyer Gerhard Strate told AFP he filed the suit demanding Motassadeq's release with the federal constitutional court in the southwestern city of Karlsruhe on the grounds that he had been held in custody during the year-long retrial.

He said that since he had not abused the trust the court placed in him at that time, it would be "capricious" to hold him in custody pending the decision on the appeal.

It was not immediately clear when the decision on whether to grant a retrial would be made.

Motassadeq was first found guilty in February 2003 and jailed for the maximum 15 years on more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder and membership in a terrorist organization in the world's first conviction in connection with September 11.

But a retrial was ordered when a federal court in 2004 quashed the verdict on the grounds that US authorities had refused to allow the court to question top suspects from
Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network in American custody.

During the new trial, the court found there was no evidence to show that Motassadeq had been directly involved in the attacks in New York and Washington, although he was found to be a member of the so-called Hamburg cell at the heart of the plot.

A Spanish court last September jailed Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, alias Abu Dahdah, the Syrian head of an Al-Qaeda cell based in that country, for 27 years for conspiring to commit murder in the attacks in New York and Washington.

Dahdah was jailed for 13 years for complicity in the attacks and 12 for belonging to a terrorist organisation.

"His participation was not proven regarding the execution of the attacks," the judges ruled, but the verdict indicated that he was linked to "Al-Qaeda's macabre designs."

Spain's High Court also jailed 17 other people, including a reporter for the Al-Jazeera television station, for between six and 11 years.

Ruan Zongze, deputy head of the China Institute of International Studies and an expert on China-U.S. relations, said the report criticized China as lacking military transparency.

"The criticism is unacceptable," said Ruan. China has publicized white papers on its national defence annually for many years and issued a first-ever white paper on its peaceful development in December 2005.

Kong said China is taking a straight path toward peaceful development and is adopting a national defence policy of a defensive nature, thus constituting an important force to promote the peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region and the world. "China has never threatened any country in the past and at present, and will never do so in the future," he said.

He urged the U.S. side to correct its viewpoints and actions, saying it should "review China's peaceful development from an objective perspective and stop its random and irresponsible remarks on China's normal defence construction."

Instead, the United States "should do more to promote the healthy and steady growth of Sino-U.S. relations," he said.

Ruan noted that compared with the previous report issued in 2001, this QDR specified China's military potential to challenge the United States. The United States is paying more and more attention to China's military issues.

Zhu Feng, a professor of the International Relations Institute of the prestigious Beijing University, said the United States considers China as the biggest competitor and therefore has continuously strengthened its guard against China.

In a telephone interview with the broadcaster, Iger said the company has been talking about the possibility of building a Disneyland theme park in Shanghai, China's business hub.

"On theme parks, we have ongoing discussions, ongoing and ongoing and ongoing with the Chinese government about a park in Shanghai," Iger was quoted as saying in the interview.

Alannah Goss, director of corporate communications at Walt Disney Company Asia Pacific Ltd. in Hong Kong, said in a statement Tuesday that there is nothing new to report on the progress of Shanghai discussions.

"The Walt Disney Company has not reached an agreement with Shanghai to build a second theme park in China. If we were to reach an agreement for a second park in China, it would not open before 2010.

"China is a priority for the entire company and we have a continuing dialogue about a variety of Disney initiatives, including television, motion pictures and consumer products, of which theme parks are only a part," the statement said.

When Hong Kong was chosen to house Disney's first theme park in China, which opened last September, the city was told that a second one will not be built before 2010.

Hong Kong's Economic Development and Labor Bureau, which oversees the park's management, said last month that Disney has not ruled out a second theme park in China, but that it has also publicly confirmed that a second park will not open before 2010.