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Pope’s Regrets Over Statement Fail to Quiet a Storm of Protests

Many Muslims insisted Monday that Pope Benedict XVI did not go far enough in his apology on Sunday for the offense caused by a speech he gave last week that discussed Islam and holy war.

In the southern Iraqi city of Basra, protesters burned an effigy of the pope, and an Iraqi group linked to Al Qaeda posted a warning on a Web site threatening war against “worshipers of the cross.”

The supreme leader in Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called the pope’s remarks “the latest link” in the “chain of conspiracy to set off a crusade.”

And, as a Vatican official said its ambassadors would seek to better explain the pope’s statement, a Turkish man with a fake gun tried to storm a Protestant church in Turkey’s capital, Ankara. He was arrested after worshipers trapped him in the church entryway.
Read entire article at NYT