Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), is contacting member states for an emergency meeting of their foreign ministers shortly to discuss major issues including the repercussions of the sacrilegious Danish cartoons. Ihsanoglu has already spoken to Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal, Yemeni Foreign Minister Abubakar Al-Qurbi and Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar to fix a date for the meeting, press reports said yesterday quoting diplomatic sources. The meeting is significant in the backdrop of the continuing protests across the Islamic world over the blasphemous cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in a Danish newspaper and the subsequent reprint in other Western countries. The diplomats said the meeting would play a big role in defusing the current tension between the Islamic world and the European Union. --MORE 10 37 Local Time 07 37 GMT
