GAINESVILLE?A Florida pastor who has triggered a global firestorm over a threat to burn the Koran, on Friday gave a New York imam two hours to agree to hold talks on moving a planned mosque.
Terry Jones set the deadline as part of his on-again, off-again threat to set ablaze 200 Korans on Saturday's anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
Without saying what the ultimatum was or whether the tiny Florida church would go ahead with the burning, Jones and a fellow evangelical leader K.A Paul gave imam Feisal Abdul Rauf until 3:20 p.m. (1920 GMT) Friday to contact them.
"There is a confusion going on so we want to clear that confusion. For imam Feisel, the challenge is crystal clear... has he agreed to meet with Pastor Terry?" Paul told a joint press conference.
"We want to know, and we want to ask the media you can also contact him and find out if he has agreed to move the mosque from Ground Zero to another location." The two men then gave out two phone numbers.
Amid global outrage over the planned burning, Jones on Thursday said he was dropping the idea by his Dove World Outreach Center, claiming Muslim leaders had agreed to move the planned mosque further away from Ground Zero.
The plans to build an Islamic cultural center close to the site where the World Trade Center once stood before it was destroyed on 9/11 have triggered an angry debate in the United States.
But Rauf swiftly denied there was any such deal, and has not confirmed that he plans to meet Jones to discuss the issue in New York on Saturday.
The apparent deal had been brokered by Orlando-based imam Mohammed Musri, who also denied Rauf had agreed to relocate the New York mosque.
Jones "stretched and exaggerated my statements," Musri said. "I told him, I'm willing to make contact, as an imam, to the imam in New York ... and ask on his behalf to schedule a meeting. And I told him, I will invite you with me."
"I do not have any control over the mosque in New York," Musri told ABC.
World leaders have warned the Koran burning could unleash a wave of Islamic anger and spark attacks around the globe.
An impassioned President Barack Obama warned Americans meanwhile not to turn on one another over religion and mounted a strident defense of American Muslims, paying tribute to believers who are fighting in US armed forces.
"We have to make sure that we don't start turning on each other," Obama said at a White House news conference on the eve of the ninth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks in which almost 3,000 people died.
"And I will do everything that I can as long as I'm president of the United States to remind the American people that we are one nation under God and we may call that God different names, but we remain one nation.
"It is absolutely important now for the overwhelming majority of the American people to hang onto that thing that is best in us -- a belief in religious tolerance, a clarity about who our enemies are," Obama said.
"Our enemies are Al-Qaeda and their allies who are trying to kill us but have killed more Muslims than just about anybody on earth."
In a turbulent start to the festival of Eid al-Fitr, when Muslims worldwide mark the end of the Ramadan fasting month, leaders of countries including Afghanistan and Indonesia issued dire warnings against the provocative act.
Thousands of rock-pelting Afghans assaulted a NATO military outpost as Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in an Eid message that burning the Islamic holy book would be "an insult to nations."
"They numbered in their thousands, it is a big crowd," provincial deputy police chief Sayed Hassan Jafary told Agence France-Presse.
But Jones told MSNBC television earlier Friday that his church did not feel responsible for the wave of angry protests.
"We feel of course terrible... that is very, very tragic. We do not feel responsible for that. We feel what we have done, if anything, we have revealed how radical, how mean, how violent Islam is."
