London - A potentially explosive row over a teddy bear named Mohammed that threatened to spark Muslim fury and saw Western governments boil with anger was resolved by diplomacy and "common sense" Monday. The release from custody in Sudan of Gillian Gibbons, a committed primary school teacher who set out to help children in Africa in a bout of "Wanderlust" prompted by marital breakdown, did not come before time, analysts in London said.
Holding the 54-year-old teacher from Liverpool any longer in a country marked by conflict and growing religious fanaticism could have fuelled protests in Sudan - and beyond - as the cause for her detention, however absurd, was whipped up by the media.
In Britain, the unspoken fear that Gibbon's conviction for allowing her pupils to name a teddy bear Mohammed could spark street protests from the more radical elements of the country's 1.7 million Muslims, lay behind efforts to secure her immediate release.
Britain's moderate Muslim leaders did their best to calm the impending storm, calling the teacher's conviction "absurd" and her actions the result of an "innocent misunderstanding."
But the signs were ominous, and memories of the worldwide cartoon protests nearly two years still fresh.
Confirming that efforts to get Gibbons released were a race against time, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, the British peer who helped negotiate her release, confirmed that hardliners in Sudan were pushing for a retrial and a tougher sentence.
"Initially the meetings were hopeful but we felt very quickly the mood changed and a more hard-lined mood developing," Warsi said of her joint efforts with Labour colleague Lord Nazir Ahmed.
"People were calling for a retrial which was a very real possibility," she added.
For British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, beleaguered by a number of domestic scandals, the successful intervention by Warsi and Ahmed proved fortuitous, providing the first piece of good news in weeks.
Throughout the weekend, the government in London stressed that the two Muslim members of the House of Lords had gone to Sudan on their "own private initiative."
But on Monday Brown seemed only to happy to extend an official "thank you" to the pair, when he said: "I applaud the particular efforts of Lord Ahmed and Baroness Warsi in securing her (Gibbon's) freedom."
Brown is not very well liked by the government in Khartoum for his stance on the Darfur conflict which, according to analysts in London, lies at the heart of the teddy bear controversy.
Soon after taking power in June, Brown went out on a limb over the Darfur conflict, threatening the Sudanese government with United Nations sanctions if peace talks failed.
The government in London has also backed moves to bring two top- ranking Sudanese officials before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to face allegations of war crimes.
According to Gillian Lusk, Sudan specialist and associate editor of the Africa Confidential newsletter, the whole teddy bear row is "a big warning" to the West about Darfur.
"It's a way of saying don't even think about sending Western troops to Darfur," she said.
Pointing to the "constant harassment" of foreigners working in Sudan, and especially in Darfur, Lusk said the Gibbons case was a ploy by Sudan's Islamist government to shore up support, and to present the Darfur peace mission as more of a "Western invasion."
"In the end it's Sudan that has won, not Britain," said Lusk.
