Washington ? Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday blamed Iran and Syria for deliberately encouraging anti-Western violence by igniting Muslim anger over cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad.

“I don’t have any doubt … Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiment and to use this to their own purposes, and the world ought to call them on it,” Rice told reporters.

Also Wednesday, The Associated Press demanded Muslim groups stop using a picture of a bearded man wearing fake pig ears and nose as evidence of bias against Muslims. The photo is from a French pig-squealing contest, the AP said.

A blurry, black-and-white copy of the picture was included in a brochure that a delegation of Danish Muslim leaders carried on a Mideast tour to Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Turkey in December and January, the AP said.

Amid reports that four Afghans angered by the cartoons were killed while protesters tried to storm a U.S. military base, President Bush called for an end to the violent protests and urged the press to be responsible in handling sensitive topics.

“We reject violence as a way to express discontent with what may be printed in the free press. I call upon the governments around the world to stop the violence,” Bush said after meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah, the most prominent Muslim leader to visit the White House since the cartoon uproar.

This was the first time the president has spoken out about the controversy, signaling deepening White House concern about violent protests stemming from the publication of caricatures in Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten and reprinted in European media and elsewhere in the past week.

Abdullah criticized such cartoons.

“With all respect to press freedoms, obviously anything that vilifies the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, or attacks Muslim sensibilities, I believe, needs to be condemned,” the king said.