Pastor rules out Koran burning ‘for now’

“We believe that the imam is going to keep his word, what he promised us yesterday … We believe that we are, as he said, and promised, going to meet with the imam in New York tomorrow.”

Mr Jones is flying to New York in a bid to persuade Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Islamic cleric behind the controversial Ground Zero mosque project to cancel it in return for abandoning his planned ceremony to burn 200 copies of the Koran.

Mr Rauf, a cleric who works with the US State Department to improve America’s relations with the Muslim world, argues the mosque would be used to promote inter-faith peace.

But his plan has become a major controversy ahead of the September 11 anniversary midterm and sensitive US congressional elections on November 2.

Radical opponents, such as the Florida pastor, have accused the mosque’s supporters of creating a monument honouring the Islamist terrorists who carried out the September 11 attacks.

Mr Jones, facing international condemnation and possible action from the US authorities, has now tried to cast himself as having single-handedly resolved the mosque standoff thanks to his threat to desecrate the Koran.

The imam of Mecca said on Friday that the pastor’s threat to burn copies of the Koran was an incitement to “terrorism”.

“The call to burn copies of our holy book is a form of terrorism and an incitement to terrorism,” Saleh bin Humaid said in a sermon marking the Muslim feast of Eid.

With Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah and Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri among the sea of worshippers thronging Islam’s holiest city, Mr Humaid said that burning the Koran would be “aggression against Islam”.

“It is shameful to attribute this act to the freedom of expression,” he said. “This is an act of aggression against Islam and its followers.”

At least 11 Afghans were wounded when stone throwing protesters attacked a Nato base in the north of Afghanistan.

A crowd, estimated at 10,000 by officials in the Badakhshan province, poured into the streets of Faizabad on Friday morning after special Eid prayers to mark the end of Muslim Ramadan.

The protests quickly turned violent and, according to reports, a man was shot dead when German troops inside the Nato base opened fire after they were attacked.

Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, phoned the Florida pastor on Thursday night and asked him to reconsider his plans to burn Korans on Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the September 11th attacks, because it could have endangered the lives of American troops.

President Barack Obama earlier warned that the plans served as a “recruitment bonanza for al-Qaeda”, and were “completely contrary to our values”. Burning the Koran could provoke a wave of terrorist attacks on the West.