THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: Rick Santorum, the Republican presidential hopeful, has accused Afghans of "overreacting" over the burning of the Koran, as he criticised President Barack Obama for apologising for the incident.
Mr Santorum said there was "no deliberate act ... of disrespect" when US authorities at Bagram airbase north of Kabul apparently disposed of the Islamic holy books in a fire.
The United States rushed to condemn the burnings, and Mr Obama apologised to the Afghan people for what he said was a mistake.
President Hamid Karzai went on television Sunday to appeal for calm, after an explosion of outrage over the burning resulted in dozens of deaths, including two US military advisers killed in Afghanistan's interior ministry.
Mr Obama's apology in itself had "made it sound like there was something that you should apologise for, and there was no act that needed an apology," Mr Santorum told NBC's "Meet the Press" talk show.
"I think the response needs to be apologised for, by Mr Karzai and the Afghan people, for attacking and killing our men and women in uniform, and overreacting to this inadvertent mistake. That is the real crime, not what our soldiers did." » | Sunday, February 26, 2012
