After talks with Salloukh on bilateral relations, Deputy State Secretary for Foreign Affairs Raymond Johansen said "this is unfortunate and regrettable."

Salloukh said the Norwegian official promised that his government would take necessary measures to make sure the offensive cartoons would not be published again.

Johansen criticized the magazine for running the drawings, saying they could deepen divisions between different faiths.

"Freedom of expression is a constitutional right in Norway but we believe that the caricatures don't help in building trust between people of different faiths. On the contrary, they encourage distrust," Johansen said.

The Danish daily Jyllands-Posten originally published the 12 cartoons last September. They include an image of the Prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse, and another portraying him holding a sword, his eyes covered by a black rectangle. A third pictured a middle-aged prophet standing in the desert with a walking stick, in front of a donkey and a sunset.

Johansen said tolerance and mutual respect are one of the basic values of Norwegian society and that his country has always supported efforts to fight religious discrimination.

The cartoons initially passed with little comment. But they prompted an international uproar and calls for an apology from leading Muslims when they were later reprinted in the Norwegian magazine.

Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah strongly criticized the drawings Wednesday.

He said that commercial boycott is not the proper response. He urged the Muslim world to take a strong stance in defense of its dignity, but did not specify how.

"We must be prepared to do anything for the defense of the dignity of our Prophet Mohammed," Nasrallah said.

Several European newspapers reprinted the drawings Wednesday, triggering rage among Muslim and Arab countries. Some called for punishment of offenders and boycott of Danish products.