ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's new foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi complained to his Dutch counterpart on Tuesday over a planned anti-Islam cartoon contest, saying "such acts spread hate and intolerance".
Far-right Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders has planned the contest for later in the year, and caricatures of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed are to be exhibited.
A Pakistani foreign office statement said Qureshi said the planned event would hurt the feelings of Muslims around the world.
Qureshi said later he planned to take up the issue with several world leaders. "We have raised this issue at several levels," he said. "We have contacted the United Nations. We have contacted the European Union."
Pakistan's upper house of parliament on Monday condemned the contest. Prime Minister Imran Khan said: "They don't understand how much they hurt us when they do such acts."
An extremist Islamist party Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan is organising a protest march against the contest on Wednesday.
The protesters are scheduled to march from the eastern city of Lahore to the capital Islamabad.
Wilders plans to display the cartoons on the walls of his political party's room in parliament. He says he's had "hundreds" of entries.
"This contest is not an initiative by the government," Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said last week.
"This contest is not something I would do."
Pakistan complains to Netherlands over Wilders anti-Islam cartoon plans
Pakistan complains to Netherlands over Wilders anti-Islam cartoon plans
- The protesters are scheduled to march from Lahore to Islamabad
- Pakistan's upper house of parliament on Monday condemned the contest
France’s Macron accepts resignation of Louvre museum chief after jewel theft
- Des Cars has faced intense criticism since burglars made off in October with jewels worth an estimated $102m
- Strikes over pay and conditions since December have also led to regular closures
PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron accepted the resignation on Tuesday of the head of Paris’ Louvre museum, which has been grappling with the fallout from a high-profile jewel heist and rolling strikes.
Laurence des Cars tendered her resignation, which Macron accepted, “praising an act of responsibility at a time when the world’s largest museum needs calm and a strong new impetus to successfully carry out major projects involving security and modernization,” his office said.
Des Cars has faced intense criticism since burglars made off in October with jewels worth an estimated $102 million that are still missing, exposing glaring security gaps at the world’s most-visited museum.
Strikes over pay and conditions since December have also led to regular closures and added to a list of woes that included two water leaks as well as a massive ticket fraud investigation.
Critics including the state auditors’ office have questioned the museum’s low spending on security and infrastructure maintenance while it made lavish purchases of new artwork, only a quarter of which is open to the public, and spent heavily on post-pandemic relaunch projects.
