"The outrage over cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad poses a challenge for the United States at a time when the Bush administration is investing greater resources to reach out to the Muslim world, U.S. officials said yesterday.

President Bush's proposed budget, announced Monday, would significantly boost cultural exchanges in the Muslim world and would eliminate English-language Voice of America broadcasts to most of the world in order to bolster programming in the Middle East.

The controversy could also have broader foreign policy repercussions, such as weakening European resolve against a Hamas-led Palestinian government as a way of calming restless Muslim minorities. The Bush administration has supported Israeli efforts to isolate the Palestinian government since Hamas, formally known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, swept Palestinian legislative elections. But the real test about whether European leaders will maintain a hard line will come when the makeup of the new government becomes clear.

Although few U.S. news organizations have published or broadcast the images, some of the violence has turned toward American facilities, including the consulate in Surabaya, Indonesia. At least three people were killed Monday outside Bagram air base in Afghanistan.

"We're starting to see the American flag popping up with the Danish flag in protests," said a U.S. official who has been watching the situation. "This could be the beginning of a long misunderstanding between the West and East."

Even before violence erupted, U.S. officials monitoring Iranian media out of Dubai had begun to detect a nascent campaign to expose a perceived hypocrisy of American culture. The campaign would focus on gun violence, such as the killings at Columbine High School in Colorado, in a nation that is fighting a war against Islamic extremism and terrorism.

The furor over cartoons published in a Danish newspaper thus appears to be tailor-made for a government seeking to exploit cultural and religious divides. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme religious leader, yesterday belittled the Western concept of freedom of speech and said a "Zionist conspiracy" is to blame for the dispute.

"This is while in accordance with this freedom of speech, denial of Holocaust has been banned, but sacrilege against the sanctities of 1.5 billion Muslims has been allowed," he said, according to Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency. "The reaction of the Muslim world was in time, and they should have reacted this way."

U.S. officials said it is no accident that the worst violence has occurred in Iran -- which is smarting over a decision Saturday by the International Atomic Energy Agency to report the impasse over Tehran's nuclear program to the U.N. Security Council -- and in Syria, also under U.S. pressure. U.S. officials also blame Syrian operatives for fostering the attack on the Danish Embassy in Beirut.

Karen Hughes, the longtime Bush aide who is now undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, has been monitoring the situation and is involved in crafting the administration's response, including sending cables to ambassadors on how to publicly comment on the controversy. Thus far, the administration has tried to strike a balance that includes embrace of freedom of expression, displeasure at the cartoons, disgust at the violence and support for the Danish government. U.S. officials have also thrown barbs at Iran and Syria, which they accuse of inflaming the situation for cynical purposes.

"We believe that it is an important principle that peoples around the world encourage dialogue, not violence; dialogue, not misunderstanding; and that when you see an image that is offensive to another particular group, to speak out against that," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday. "Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images, as anti-Christian images or any other religious belief. . . . But it is important that we also support the rights of individuals to express their freely held views."

Bush called Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen yesterday to express solidarity with Denmark, following up on a call Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made over the weekend to her Danish counterpart. The leaders "reiterated the importance of tolerance and respect for religions of all faith, and freedom of press," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

Interviewed yesterday on PBS's "NewsHour," Vice President Cheney said: "We believe very deeply in freedom of expression. Obviously, we think, you know, that it's appropriate for people to respect one another's religions, but I don't believe that the printing of those cartoons justifies the violence that we've seen."" (Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post, February 8, 2006)