Violent demonstrations in Muslim world seen

WASHINGTON -- Obama administration officials are bracing for another potential eruption of violent demonstrations in parts of the Muslim world Friday after weekly Friday prayers -- traditionally a time of protest in the Middle East and North Africa.

There were new protests over an anti-Islam video Thursday in Yemen, Egypt and other Muslim countries, and officials theorize that well-armed Libyan extremists hijacked a similar protest at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, Tuesday night, resulting in the killing of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

The United States put all of its diplomatic missions overseas on high alert, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered an explicit denunciation of the video in an effort to pre-empt further turmoil at U.S. diplomatic outposts.

"To us, to me personally, this video is disgusting and reprehensible," Clinton said at the State Department. "It appears to have a deeply cynical purpose: to denigrate a great religion and to provoke rage."

U.S. officials said they suspect that the Benghazi consulate attack may have been only tangentially related to the film, whose maker has been identified by law enforcement officials as a California man who follows the Egypt-based Coptic Christian church.

Washington officials also stressed there had been no warning or intelligence to suggest a deadly threat in Libya, even on the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

"As we did with all of our missions overseas, in advance of the Sept. 11 anniversary and as we do every year, we did evaluate the threat stream and we determined that the security at Benghazi was appropriate for what we knew," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

The intelligence leading up to the attacks will be examined to "see if there was any way of forecasting this violence," House Intelligence Committee member Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said.

Despite the belief that the militants who hit the consulate did so separately from the protests over the film, U.S. officials are deeply concerned that extremists may take advantage of nonviolent demonstrations to copycat the Benghazi raid, or that otherwise peaceful protesters may be incited to attack because of the video, particularly Friday.

"These things can be mobilized on the spur of the moment, set off by a spark," especially in places such as Egypt and Libya where the ruling strongmen have just fallen, said retired U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte, who served as chief of mission at five posts, including Iraq.

Egypt's ruling Muslim Brotherhood called for demonstrations after Friday prayers, as did authorities in Iran and the Gaza Strip. Large protests were expected in Baghdad and Iraq's second-largest city, Basra, and in Amman, Jordan. Israel was stepping up security in anticipation of demonstrations after Muslim prayers.

President Barack Obama, speaking at a campaign event in Golden, Colo., vowed that the perpetrators of the Benghazi killings would be punished. "I want people around the world to hear me," he said. "To all those who would do us harm: No act of terror will go unpunished."