Clark gives world leaders lesson on tolerance

Prime Minister Helen Clark has led a session for other government leaders worried about the backlash from cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Helen Clark said today the storm of outrage in the Muslim world over the publication of the cartoons by Western media had been high on the agenda of the two-day summit of seven centre-left world leaders she is attending in South Africa.

The cartoons, first published in Denmark, included one of Muhammad wearing a bomb as a turban.

They have been subsequently published in several other countries, including New Zealand. The Herald has not published them.

Many Muslims have called for trade bans on countries where the cartoons have been published.

But Helen Clark said New Zealand's tolerant approach to migrant communities had reduced some of the fallout.

"I said it perhaps said something for the work that is done in New Zealand to try and build more tolerance and respect for minorities that the New Zealand Islamic community was calling on Middle Eastern countries not to boycott New Zealand," she said today on National Radio.

"In some parts of the Western world where the cartoons have been published the Islamic communities have been so alienated that they have taken a very different approach."

She said the issue had preoccupied British Prime Minister Tony Blair, one of the other world leaders in attendance.

"The London bombing brought to the fore the fact that there is a lot of radicalisation among second and third generation migrants," she said.

Helen Clark said she had been asked to lead a session today on how to get good inclusion of minorities -- both indigenous and migrant communities.

- NZPA