ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates -- Prince Charles of Britain withdrew from a scheduled polo match in the Persian Gulf port city of Dubai because of heightened security concerns in the wake of Moslem furor over 'The Satanic Verses,' officials said.
'There has been no specific threat but the government felt it would be prudent for Prince Charles not to take part in the match for security considerations,' a Persian Gulf-based British diplomat said Friday.
Charles and his wife, Princess Diana, were in Dubai on the third leg of a gulf tour that included Kuwait and Bahrain. UAE officials said Diana has already left for London and Charles was scheduled to travel alone to Saudi Arabia before returning to Britain.
The heir to the British throne withdrew from the polo match Friday, a day after foreign ministers from 46 Moslem countries joined Iran in condemning British author Salman Rushdie as an apostate.
Iran had denounced the prince's visit to the gulf as an 'insult to Moslems.' The Islamic republic earlier severed relations with Britain, Rushdie's adopted country, for protecting the writer from a death decree issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
The Iranian spiritual leader said Rushdie must be killed because his novel was blasphemous toward Mohammed, the founder of Islam.
Outrage over the book continued to ferment Friday in among Moslems worldwide.
In Bangladesh, about 40,000 Moslems rallied before the national mosque in Dhaka and then marched through the capital calling for Rushdie's death. Scores of police watched the peaceful protest but did not interfere.
The massive demonstration was sponsored by the Jamaati Islami, a fundamentalist Islamic political party, which said it organized hundreds of other protests around the country.
'We demand that Salman Rushdie be hanged in the same way as the British hanged many for blasphemy in the past,' Jamaati Islami leader Abdul Quader Mollah told the protesters.
In Sudan, several thousand people marched through Khartoum demanding a break in diplomatic ties with the United States and Britain to protest their publication of the novel.
In Malaysia, the Home Ministry banned two magazines from carrying extracts of 'The Satanic Verses.' The government last month joined other Moslem states in prohibiting publication of the book.
In Beirut, a pro-Syrian magazine magazine said the controversy over 'The Satanic Verses' disrupted a deal aimed at freeing three British hostages held in Lebanon, including Anglican church hostage negotiator Terry Waite.
Rushdie, who was born a Moslem in Bombay, India and became a British citizen, went into hiding after Khomeini issued the order for his death Feb. 14. His book contains a dream sequence that many Moslems regard as an insulting parody of the Mohammed.
British officials in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates said Prince Charles was reluctant to withdraw from the polo match but did so at the advice of the British Foreign Office. The match took place without him.
There is a large Iranian community in Dubai, a port opposite the southern Iranian mainland, and Tehran radio earlier this week called the royal tour through the Gulf 'an insult to Moslems' because of the Rushdie affair.
In Beirut, Ash Shiraa magazine, best known for disclosing the secret U.S.-Iran arms-for-hostages deal in 1986, quoted what it called 'British political sources' as saying Iran's Parliament speaker Hashemi Rafsanjani and the British Foreign Office exchanged several letters concerning the fate of the hostages shorthly before the Rushdie saga.
'An Iranian envoy had arrived in London to hold talks on the hostages when Khomeini issued the death order against Rushdie,' the magazine said, adding that a British envoy was supposed to travel to Tehran to 'conclude the deal'. It said the talks were disrupted by the Rushdie controversy.
There are three Britons held hostage in Lebanon, along with nine Americans and two other foreigners. The Britons are Waite, journalist John McCarthy, and educator Brian Keenan.
