BERLIN, Feb. 6 (UPI) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel took a strong stand against a nuclear Iran over the weekend, while Germany's Foreign Minister tried to play a conciliatory role in the row over the Prophet Mohammed cartoons.
"Iran has blatantly crossed the red line," Merkel said at the 42nd Munich Security Conference, which drew some 300 high-ranking politicians and security experts from all over the world. "I say that as the German chancellor. A president that questions Israel's right to exist, a president that denies the Holocaust, cannot expect to receive any tolerance from Germany."
Her remarks came shortly before the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, referred the row over Iran's nuclear program to the U.N. Security Council.
After the referral, Iran said it would cut ties with the IAEA to a minimum, which includes denying the organization's controllers entry for inspections and resuming full-scale uranium enrichment.
Western politicians, including Merkel, put high hopes into an offer from Russia to enrich uranium on Russian soil, thus alleviating fears that Tehran has a secret atomic weapons program.
Merkel even compared the situation in Iran to the Third Reich, when Europeans slept during the semi-silent rise of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party which eventually ordered the killing of some 6 million Jews.
"We have learned from our history," she said. "Now we see that there were times when we could have acted differently. For that reason Germany is obliged to intervene at an early stage ... to make clear (to Iran) what flies and what doesn't fly."
The head of Russia's parliamentary committee for international affairs, Konstantin Kosachev, said in Monday's Berliner Zeitung newspaper that Iran should not be isolated, adding the Feb. 16 meeting between Tehran and Moscow over the Russian offer could lead to a resolution of the standoff.
"Maybe it's going to be a project not only with Russia, but a multilateral one with China and other countries that Iran trusts. Everything is possible," he said.
That view is shared by a senior German defense expert of Merkel's conservatives, who said Sunday he was optimistic that Iran would accept the offer.
"At the Munich conference, I spoke to the Iranian deputy foreign minister and I have the impression that Iran is eager to use this coming month," Friedbert Pflueger said during a political talk show at public TV station ARD Sunday night. "Iran is looking into the Russian offer. We should focus on that chance."
The talk show included U.S. Security Adviser Richard Perle, a key architect of the Iraq war, who said Iran was sponsoring terrorism and should be prevented from acquiring an atomic bomb by all possible means.
Perle clashed with Hans-Christian Stroebele, a senior Green Party lawmaker, over Washington's recent military missions.
"I fear that we directly steer into a new war," Stroebele said. "The U.S. President has already based a war of aggression on lies and I think that he's doing it again. Washington has been planning this war for a long time."
Stroebele added a war would likely include a nuclear strike.
"You are talking complete nonsense," Perle replied.
But neither at the talk show nor at the security conference was Iran the only topic of concern.
Over the weekend conference, protests over the publication of Prophet Mohammed caricatures turned violent in the Middle East and Asia, as Danish embassies were set on fire in Syria and Lebanon, and angry Muslims took to the streets in several cities in Afghanistan, Indonesia and India.
The German Foreign Ministry on Monday upgraded its travel warnings to the Middle East, saying Germans should stay away from large gatherings and demonstrations. Travel organizations so far see no reason to cancel trips to the region, however.
Europe is increasingly worried that the protests, which spread from the Middle East into Asia, will continue traveling to Western Europe. But so far, protests have remained peaceful there, with several leaders trying to calm things down.
"I call on all Muslims to stop the violence. It's not Islamic," Ayyub Axel Koehler, the head of the Central Muslim Council, one of Germany's largest Muslim organizations, told Monday's Westdeutsche Zeitung newspaper.
"We have to do everything to de-escalate the conflict," Pflueger said, adding that the German Muslim community so far had done just that.
