BAGHDAD, 21 May 2008 — US President George W. Bush apologized yesterday to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki for the desecration of the Qur’an by a US soldier stationed in Iraq, media reports said.

The Al-Iraqiya news channel reported that Maliki received an apology from the US president on the incident, which involved the soldier firing his weapon at the holy book for target practice.

In Washington, White House press secretary Dana Perino said Bush spoke to Maliki about the Qur’an shooting incident during a regularly scheduled videoconference on Monday.

She said Bush expressed his “serious concern.” “He told the prime minister that we take this matter seriously, and he noted that the soldier had been reprimanded and removed from Iraq by his commanders,” Perino said.

She made no mention of the Bush apology reported in the statement issued by Maliki’s office. The statement said Maliki told Bush of the “disappointment and anger of the people and government of Iraq over the soldier’s disgraceful action.” Bush told Maliki that the sniper would face trial, it added.

Separately, the statement said an Iraqi Cabinet meeting yesterday called for the “severest” punishment against the sniper and warned of “grave consequences” if similarly offensive actions were committed in the future.

It also called on commanders of US-led foreign troops in Iraq to educate their soldiers on the need to respect the religious beliefs of Iraqis.

The US military said Sunday it had disciplined the sniper and removed him from Iraq after he was found to have used Islam’s holy book for target practice May 9. The copy of the Qur’an was found two days later by Iraqis on a firing range in Radwaniyah, west of Baghdad, with 14 bullet holes in it.

Meanwhile, an explosion targeted a convoy of the speaker of Iraq’s Council of Representatives, Mahmoud Al-Mashhadani, wounding three of his companions, Iraqi television reported. The blast occurred in an area west of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

In the southern city of Basra, an Iraqi police officer was killed in the late hours of Monday in the Ashar area, police sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

Iraqi forces detained 15 suspected terrorists and confiscated a large weapons cache in the same city. Militants opened fire on four members of the Awakening Council in Diloeiya city, some 80 kilometers north of Baghdad.