Pressure mounts for Pope's apology

Vatican City: Pressure mounted on Pope Benedict to issue a personal apology on Sunday when he makes his first public appearance since his comments about Islam sparked Muslim fury across the world.

Reports from Vatican said security has been tightened around the papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, just south of Rome, as Islamic groups in Somalia and Iraq threatened to kill the head of the Roman Catholic Church.

The pope was due to give the traditional Angelus blessing from the balcony of Castel Gandolfo at midday (1000 GMT) followed by a message to pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's Square.

The Pope, leader of the world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics, was due to give his regular Sunday blessing - known as the Angelus - an occasion often used by pontiffs to express the church's views on current affairs.

The Vatican said on Saturday the Pope was sorry Muslims had been offended and that his comments had been misconstrued, but Muslim countries and religious groups remained angry at what they said portrayed Islam as a religion tainted with violence.

"As the head of state, I regret the pope's statement. It was unwise and inappropriate," President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told reporters Saturday on the sidelines of the Nonaligned Movement summit in Havana, the Kompas daily reported.

"I hope the Vatican will take corrective and constructive measures to end the tension following the Pope's statement," he was quoted as saying.

Yudhoyono also called on Indonesian Muslims to restrain themselves and maintain religious harmony in the country. Five churches were attacked in the Palestinian territories on Saturday and in Iraq a bomb exploded outside a church south of Baghdad. There were no injuries reported.

Sunni Islam's top authority and the head of Cairo's Al Azhar university, Shaikh Mohammad Sayyed Tantawi, said the pope had betrayed "a clear ignorance of Islam", and Morocco said it was recalling its ambassador to the Holy See.

Other reactions ranged from measured calls for a full apology to threats of extreme violence.

A hardline cleric linked to Somalia's powerful Islamist movement called for Muslims to "hunt down" and kill the pope, while an armed Iraqi group threatened to carry out attacks against Rome and the Vatican.

Reaction to the Vatican's explanatory statement was swift, with Egypt's opposition Muslim Brotherhood saying it fell well short of the required apology.

"The pope is sorry because his statements had been badly interpreted, but there is no bad interpretation," Abdul Moneim Abul Futuh, a senior official with the group, told reporters.

"The pope made a mistake, he must recognise his mistake and apologise," he said.

The Muslim Council of Britain said the statement was a "good first step" but also questioned whether it constituted "enough of an apology."

"There is still a concern that he has not repudiated the views of the (Byzantine) emperor," the council said.