Pope To Fault Bush On Iraq

Cardinal Pio Laghi said the pontiff will warn Bush that American forces in Iraq are damaging efforts to bring religions together, and that Washington should have better understand of the Islamic world.

"The U.S.-led occupation force in Iraq should be replaced by a multinational presence which is not dominated by those who wanted and fought the war," he was quoted as saying by Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Laghi was the pope’s envoy to Washington last year in a fruitless attempt to persuade Bush not to invade Iraq against the wishes of the majority of the United Nations and its 15-member Security Council.

Lack Of Understanding

The cardinal also expected the pontiff to tell Bush that his policies in the Middle East in general were not helping the cause of peace.

Referring to revelations this month of torture and humiliating mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers, Laghi asked "how is it possible to remain in Iraq if these abuses continue?"

"We must above all build cultural understanding between peoples and I do not believe that our American friends are doing that," he said.

"Bombing mosques, going into holy places, putting women soldiers in contact with naked men shows a lack of understanding of the Muslim world which I can only call surprising," said the Vatican official.

"We must build bridges with Islam, not dig trenches between us," he asserted.

Laghi said he was "astonished" at the behavior of American troops and called for "all light to be shed on this affair, justice to be done and guarantees given so it does not happen again".

‘Injustice’

The Vatican official said the pope would also tell Bush that "the fight against terrorism must not be purely repressive and punitive" but "must also proceed from the elimination of its causes, which are rooted in injustice".

The cardinal underlined that the need to "give top priority to the Israeli-Palestinian question."

Breaking with a decades-old U.S. policy, Bush said after talks with Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon on Wednesday, April 15, Israel could keep Palestinian territories in the west Bank occupied in the 1967 war, and that Palestinian refugees should not be allowed to return to their homes in what is today Israel.

Thirty-two draft resolutions criticizing Israel since 1972 have never seen the light because the U.S. used its Security Council veto to block them.

Bush president is due to meet the pope on June 4 before traveling to France for ceremonies commemorating the 60th anniversary of the allied landings on the Atlantic coast on June 6, 1944, which began the liberation of Europe from Nazi occupation.