COPENHAGEN - Syria and Lebanon have promised to pay for the extensive fire damage done to Danish missions during the Mohammed cartoon riots in Damascus and Beirut in February, Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller said on Tuesday.

"Syria and Lebanon have informed me that they intend to reimburse Denmark for the damage done to Danish missions in Damascus and Beirut," Moeller said in a written reply to a question by the far-right Danish People's Party (DPP) deputy leader Peter Skaarup, a copy of which was posted on the parliament's website.

The DPP is a close ally of Denmark's ruling Liberal-Conservative minority government.

"The total cost of the damage is being finally worked out at the present time, after which details will be sent to the governments of Syria and Lebanon with a request for compensation," Moeller wrote in his parliamentary reply.

Rioters attacked and set fire to Denmark's embassy in Damascus and general consulate in Beirut during violent protests in February against the publication by Denmark's leading broadsheet Jyllands-Posten last September of controversial drawings of the Prophet Mohammed.

Islam considers any depiction of the prophet blasphemous.

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