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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Skywatcher who wrote (46224)	5/14/2004 1:40:38 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

The Pope..and His Champion.. Come out swinging... tcnj.edu Pope expected to tell Bush he is wrong on Iraq: Vatican Thu May 13, ROME (AFP) - Pope John Paul (news - web sites) II is expected to warn President George W. Bush (news - web sites) when the two men meet on June 4 that his policy in Iraq (news - web sites) is wrong and the actions of US troops are damaging efforts to bring religions closer together, a senior Vatican (news - web sites) official revealed. Cardinal Pio Laghi said the US-led occupation force in Iraq should be replaced by "a multinational presence which is not dominated by those who wanted and fought the war." It was not enough for a military force in Iraq not to be under US command, "it must not even give the impression that it is," he said Thursday. 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 (news - web sites) and its 15-member Security Council. Referring to revelations this month of torture and humiliating mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers, the cardinal asked "how is it possible to remain in Iraq if these abuses continue?" Laghi said he liked the United States and "could not have imagined that this madness was possible". He said he was "astonished" at the behaviour of US 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." Bush is due to meet the pope on June 4 before travelling 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. Laghi said Bush had been very anxious to see the pope and had changed his schedule to make the meeting possible, but said he did not think the president wanted to make political capital out of it before the election due to take place in November. "If ever there were a difficult time to ask for an audience with the pope it is now," he said. The cardinal said he also expected the pope to tell Bush that his policies in the Middle East in general were not helping the cause of peace. "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," he said. "We must build bridges with Islam, not dig trenches between us," he went on. "And we must give top priority to the Israeli-Palestinian question, which is the root cause of terrorism." The pope would 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." Bush and the pope have met twice before, but the June 4 audience will be their first since the start of the war in Iraq.