TEHRAN, Iran – The Iranian government on Sunday rejected an accusation by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that it has fanned violent protests over caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad and demanded an apology, saying that could reduce growing tension.

Rice, meanwhile, said Iran and Syria should be urging their citizens to remain calm – not encouraging violence like last week’s attacks on Western diplomatic missions in Tehran, Damascus and Beirut, Lebanon. Nearly a dozen people also were killed in protests in Afghanistan.

“If people continue to incite it, it could spin out of control,” she said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” as furor mounted over the cartoons of Islam’s most revered figure that first appeared in a Danish newspaper four months ago.

The drawings have been reprinted in several publications in what publishers say is a show for freedom of expression.

The images offended many Muslims as Islam widely holds that representations of the prophet are banned for fear they could lead to idolatry.

But some suggest the genuine anger displayed by crowds across the Muslim world has been exploited or intensified by some Muslim countries in the region to settle scores with Western powers.

Rice said Wednesday “Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and to use this to their own purposes. And the world ought to call them on it.”

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said an apology from Rice and Denmark would help calm things down.

“What happened was a natural reaction. Rice and Danish officials should apologize. Such comments could worsen the situation and an apology could alleviate the tension,” Asefi said.

He spoke a day before one of Iran’s largest newspapers was to open a contest seeking caricatures of the Holocaust. Hamshahri newspaper said it wanted to test whether the West extends its principle of freedom of expression to the Nazi genocide as it did to the cartoons of Islam’s prophet.

When asked by ABC to give evidence that Iran and Syria had incited the demonstrations, Rice said little happens without government permission in the two countries.

“I can say that the Syrians tightly control their society and the Iranians even more tightly. It is well known that Iran and Syria bring protesters into the streets when they wish, to make a point,” she said.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan condemned the drawings as “insensitive and rather offensive,” but he called for dialogue.