 The refusal to meet the ambassadors was later prominently criticised by the Danish political opposition , twenty @-@ two Danish ex @-@ ambassadors and the Prime Minister 's fellow party member , former Minister of Foreign Affairs Uffe Ellemann @-@ Jensen . Hervik wrote , " While it is certainly true that the prime minister did not have a legal right to intervene in the editorial process , he could have publicly ( as an enactment of free speech ) dissociated himself from the publication , from the content of the cartoons , from Rose 's explanatory text , from Jyllands @-@ Posten 's editorial of the same day , and from the general association of Islam with terrorism . Rasmussen did none of those . Instead , he used his interview [ on 30 October 2005 ] to endorse Jyllands @-@ Posten 's position and the act of publishing the cartoons . " 
