JAKARTA (AFP) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Israel "one day will vanish" as he ramped up his anti-Western rhetoric in a speech to university students in Jakarta.

"This regime one day will vanish," the hardline leader said, complaining that when elections were held in the Palestinian territories "and supported by its people, liberalism did not want to recognise it."

The Iranian president declared last October that the Jewish state should be "wiped off the map". In April he said that Israel "cannot survive" and that migrants to the Jewish state should go back to where they came from.

Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres warned Tuesday that Iran risked its own destruction if it tried to wipe out the Jewish state. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has said the world should not take Ahmadinejad's threats lightly...

ANKARA (AFP) - A Roman Catholic priest was shot dead in the courtyard of a church in Turkey, raising fears the murder could be linked to the Muslim uproar over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published in Europe.

Italian priest Andrea Santoro, 59, was shot twice in the entrance of the Santa Maria Catholic Church in the northern city of Trabzon and the Vatican's ambassador to Turkey said the gunman shouted "God is great" as he fired his pistol.

"We don't have much to go on to make a proper interpretation of what happened. However, the only element which a collaborator of Father Santoro's mentioned to me is that the person who killed him shouted 'Allahu Akhbar'," Monsignor Antonio Lucibello was quoted as saying by Italy's ANSA news agency.

The acclamation, used in prayer, is also employed as a rallying cry by Islamic militants.

"There are claims that the incident may be related to the cartoons," Trabzon Governor Huseyin Yavuzdemir told Anatolia news agency. "This will become clear when the suspect is captured."

The Turkish government "ferociously" condemned the murder and promised to find the perpetrator, described by witnesses as a male in his late teens who ran away after the shooting...

After demonstrators in Syria protesting against caricatures depicting the Prophet Muhammed set fire to the Norweigan and Danish embassies in Damascus, Norway and Denmark advised their citizens to leave Syria as soon as possible.

European diplomats quickly protested the violence. Norwegian Ambassador to Damascus Sven Sevje told CNN that his embassy had asked for extra security in the past week but had not received any.

Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds said she has called in the Syrian ambassador in Stockholm to issue a formal protest. Sweden and Chile have embassies in the same building as the Danish embassy.

"I will deliver the protest and say that this has escalated too far," Freivalds told TT news agency. "We expect the kind of protection we have a right to demand."

LONG BEACH, Calif. - Muslim leaders who gathered Saturday to discuss their role in combating extremism within the Islamic community complained that two scheduled speakers missed the event after being detained at Los Angeles International Airport.

"People are upset," said Salam Al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, which organized the conference. "On one hand the U.S. government is asking us to do more, but on the other they are preventing us from doing our work."

British citizens Mockbul Ali and Waqqas Khan had arrived on a flight from London at 4 p.m. but only cleared customs after 8 p.m., said Erin Robertson, a spokeswoman for the British Consulate-General in Los Angeles.

Robertson said it wasn't clear why the men were delayed. Calls to U.S. Customs and Immigration officials late Saturday seeking comment were not immediately returned...

Jakarta police have said they will boost security in the capital ahead of Christmas to avoid a repeat of 2000 Christmas Eve bombings on churches in several Indonesian cities, including the country's capital.

A youth wing affiliated with Indonesia's largest Muslim group, Nahdlatul Ulama, 40 million strong, told Reuters on Friday that its members would guard churches for the coming Christmas festivities and it had persuaded youths from other religions to join the project.

Tatang Hidayat, national coordinator of NU's Banser group, said: "We have an annual programme to set up posts to secure Christmas. For this year, I have contacted groups from other religions like the Hindus and Buddhists and they have responded positively."

Hidayat said the volunteers would closely collaborate with existing police operations and the churches' own security.

Around 17,000 policemen are expected to safeguard Christmas celebrations in Jakarta alone...

NETANYA, Israel (Reuters) - A Palestinian suicide bomber killed five people outside a shopping mall in an Israeli coastal town on Monday, and Israel ordered its army to hit militant leaders behind the attack.

Witnesses said the bomber smiled before blowing himself up in Netanya, an attack that threatened to unleash a new spiral of violence which could bury peace hopes stirred by Israel's Gaza withdrawal in September.

Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the bombing, saying it was avenging Israel's recent killing of senior members of the militant group.

Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz vowed to launch a military response overnight to the attack, the fifth in the Jewish state since a truce was declared in February.

Security sources said it would include assassinations of Islamic Jihad leaders, army raids in the West Bank and tightened restrictions on Palestinian movement in the occupied territory...