Smash hit

British newspapers, while all devoting space to coverage of the dispute, have so far stopped short of reproducing the offending cartoons. Most chose to publish artfully cropped photographs of France Soir's front page to illustrate reports of the unfolding conflict.

The BBC’s one o'clock news bulletin today chose the same compromise route, screening images of foreign newspapers containing the cartoons. A spokeswoman for BBC Two's Newsnight said this afternoon that the influential news programme would be following suit - despite earlier reports that it planned to show the images in detail. The spokeswoman denied there had been a climbdown.

"To give audiences an understanding of the strong feelings evoked by the story, as part of our report we show brief glimpses of the newspaper coverage of the cartoons," she said, in an official statement. "We are not mounting special programming, or showing the cartoons directly."

The spokeswoman added: "Newsnight is not going to go any further than the One o'clock News and I'm not aware that there was ever any intention to do so. It will be enough to tell the story, but it is not gratuitous. There has been no change of plan."

The Muslim Council of Britain said its reaction to the BBC’s decision to broadcast would "depend on the context".

A spokesman said: "It depends on whether they’re broadcast to illustrate the story about the row developing, or, in the same way as the European newspapers have published, to gloat about freedom.

"We recognise that the newspapers have full freedom. However we hope that they would be able to show restraint when it comes to these images because of the enormous hurt it would cause to Muslims."

Representatives of both the Muslim Association of Britain and the Muslim Council of Britain met the Danish ambassador in London today, hoping to secure an apology. But Ahmed El-Sheikh, president of the Muslim Association of Britain, said they left Wednesday's "very constructive" meeting with simply an assurance that Denmark's government is equally concerned.

Tony Blair's spokesman declined to enter the dispute, saying: "It would be entirely wrong for the Government to ... dictate in advance what media organisations can or cannot do. It’s for people to reach their own judgments about what is within the law, it’s not for us to say."

The UK news outlets which have so far gone furthest include Channel Four news, which last night showed Muslims examining the cartoons, so that the images were visible. The website of the right-wing magazine The Spectator published the most inflammatory of the cartoons - depicting Muhammad in a bomb turban - on its website today, alongside a satirical paragraph saying that Muslims were gradually outnumbering Europeans. But the image was hastily taken down at 5pm on the orders of Stuart Reid, the magazine's acting editor, after consultation with Andrew Neil, the magazine's chief executive.

"I have no doubt that the people who put the website together this morning sincerely thought that this was a good way of approaching this. I personally don't agree and I felt that it was an unnecessary provocation," said Mr Reid. "We want to deal this in a rather more serious way."

Meanwhile in Europe, Jacques Lefranc, the editor of Paris daily France Soir who today splashed a caricature of the Prophet on his front page to illustrate the row, was sacked.

Under the headline "Yes, we have the right to caricature God", the cartoon also showed Buddha, the Christian and Jewish deities sitting on a cloud. The Christian God is saying: "Don’t complain Muhammad, all of us have been caricatured." The newspaper deplored what it called the new inquisition by "backward bigots".

Raymond Lakah, the paper’s Egyptian owner, appeared however to disagree with its editorial line. This morning he swiftly issued a public apology and fired M Lefranc.

Dalil Boubakeur, President of the French Council for the Muslim Religion, said that the newspaper had "perpetrated a real provocation in the eyes of millions of French Muslims".

In an interview today Mr Mandelson criticised the cartoons as crude and juvenile, and warned British newspapers not to print them. He said: "I understand on one level the motivation of newspapers to stand up for freedom of speech… but they are almost bound to cause offence." He said that any other re-publication "throws petrol on the flames".

In Gaza, EU staff were hurriedly evacuated today as masked gunmen from Islamic Jihad and a Fatah brigade conducted an armed protest outside their offices. "We will watch the office closely and if European countries continue their assaults against Islam and against the Prophet Muhammad, we will turn this office into ruins," a spokesman for the Yassir Arafat Brigades told Reuters.

The leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon commented that no-one would dare to insult Muslims today had the death fatwa been carried out against author Salman Rushdie over his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses.

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