Barak Obama pleads for tolerance in Quran-burning row

US President Barack Obama has made a plea for religious tolerance, amid the continuing row over a small church's threat to burn copies of the Koran.

But hours later the church, in Gainesville, Florida, issued a two-hour deadline for the imam of a proposed mosque in New York to make contact.

A spokesman for Pastor Terry Jones said he wanted clarity on whether the mosque would be moved from near Ground Zero.

The burning, orginally planned for the anniversary of 9/11, sparked outrage.

Mr Obama told reporters at the White House: "We have to make sure we don't start turning on each other."

He repeated his concerns the burning would endanger the lives of US troops.The proposed Koran burning prompted an angry reaction from Muslim countries around the world and was heavily criticised by world leaders.

Protests were reported in Afghanistan and Pakistan on Friday, as people emerged from Eid prayers marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

Three people were shot by private security guards when a protest near a Nato base in north-east Afghanistan turned violent.

Mr Obama appealed for people in the US to "rekindle the spirit of unity" felt after the 2001 terror attacks on New York.

"We are all Americans that stand together against those that would do us harm," he said.

"It is absolutely important now for the overwhelming majority of American people to hang on to that thing that is best in us - that is our belief in religious tolerance, our clarity about who our enemies are.

"I will do everything I can, as long as I am president of the United States, to remind the American people that we are one nation under God. We may call that god different names but we are one nation."

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