Pastor cancels burning of Qurans, reconsiders

September 10, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

GAINESVILLE, Fla.

An anti-Islamic preacher backed off and then threatened to reconsider burning the Quran on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, angrily accusing a Muslim leader of lying to him Thursday with a promise to move an Islamic center and mosque away from New York’s ground zero. The imam planning the center denied there ever was such a deal.

The Rev. Terry Jones generated an international firestorm with his plan to burn the Quran on Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and he has been under intense pressure to give it up. President Barack Obama urged him to listen to “those better angels” and give up his “stunt,” saying it would endanger U.S. troops and give Islamic terrorists a recruiting tool. Defense Secretary Robert Gates took the extraordinary step of calling Jones personally.

Standing outside his 50-member Pentecostal church, the Dove Outreach Center, alongside Imam Muhammad Musri, the president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, Jones said he relented when Musri assured him that the New York mosque will be moved.

Hours later, after Musri and the leader of the New York mosque denied such an agreement, Jones said Musri “clearly, clearly lied to us.”

“Given what we are now hearing, we are forced to rethink our decision,” Jones said. “So as of right now, we are not canceling the event, but we are suspending it.”

Jones did not say whether the Quran burning still could take place Saturday, but he said he expected Musri to keep his word and expected “the imam in New York to back up one of his own men.”

Jones said Thursday afternoon that he prayed about his decision and concluded that if the mosque was moved, it would be a sign from God to call off the Quran burning.

Musri thanked Jones and his church members “for making the decision today to defuse the situation and bring to a positive end what has become the world over a spectacle that no one would benefit from except extremists and terrorists” who would use it to recruit future radicals.

After the news conference, however, Musri told The Associated Press there is no deal to move the mosque. He said there was only an agreement for him and Jones to travel to New York and meet Saturday with the imam overseeing plans to build a mosque near ground zero.

Musri did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment Thursday night after Jones accused him of lying.

Adding to the confusion Thursday was the sudden injection of Donald Trump into the debate over the New York mosque, which is planned to go up two blocks north of the trade-center site.

Trump offered Thursday to buy out a major investor in the real-estate partnership that controls the site where the 13-story Islamic center would be built.

In a letter released Thursday by Trump’s publicist, Trump told Hisham Elzanaty that he would buy his stake in one of the two lower-Manhattan buildings involved in the project for 25 percent more than whatever he paid.

Elzanaty’s response: No sale.

“This is just a cheap attempt to get publicity and get in the limelight,” said his lawyer, Wolodymyr Starosolsky.