Chancellor Angela Merkel will make a speech at an event this week 'honouring' a Danish cartoonist who sparked Muslim anger by drawing a blasphemous cartoon, organisers said. The German chancellor, 56, will make a speech on press freedom at Wednesday's ceremony in Potsdam, near Berlin, awarding Kurt Westergaard, 75, the M100 Media Prize 2010, organisers said in a statement.
With Westergaard subject to death threats, there would be an "appropriate" security presence at the event, including body searches, police spokesman Rudi Sonntag told AFP. "We Germans are remembering during these months the end of the (East German) dictatorship and the reunification of our country 20 years ago," Merkel was quoted as saying in the organisers' statement.