Paris:
France has stepped up security at embassies in countries where there could be a hostile reaction to a magazine's publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Wednesday.
"I have obviously issued instructions so that special security measures are taken in all the countries where this could pose a problem," Fabius said.
The minister admitted that he was "concerned" by the potential for a backlash to satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo's printing of a series of cartoons featuring the Prophet against a background of violent protests in the Muslim world over an anti-Islam film.
The crudely-made US film is the main target of Charlie Hebdo's cartoons but they are open to easy misinterpretation and it seemed inevitable that the finer points of the magazine's satire would be lost in translation as the images circulate around the world.
The weekly carries a total of four cartoons which include images definitely intended to represent Mohammed, as opposed to any other Muslim. In two of them, the Prophet is shown naked.