Pope pleads for 'senseless' conflict to end

POPE John Paul II opened the new year yesterday

"Despite the serious and repeated attacks to the serene and joint cohabitation of peoples, peace is possible and right," the Pope said, to rare applause interrupting his homily during a New Year's Day Mass in St Peter's Basilica.

"Indeed, peace is the most precious good to invoke from God and to build with every effort," he said.

Later, he issued his traditional New Year's Day greetings in several languages to thousands of people gathering under a brilliant warm sun in St Peter's Square.

He urged them to make a small "gesture of peace" to their families, at work, in their communities to broaden a global culture of peace.

The 82-year-old Pope appeared relatively well-rested and his voice was strong and clear, despite a heavy holiday schedule that saw him struggling to celebrate Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.

The Pope cut back his participation in the New Year's Mass, turning over the actual celebration to his secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano. Yesterday , the Pope turned his attention to the two-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict the latest of several urgent appeals he has made for peace in the region.

"Bethlehem! The Holy Land! The dramatic and persistent tensions that the Middle East region finds itself in makes all the more urgent the search for a positive solution to the fratricidal and senseless conflict, which for too long has bloodied it," the Pope said in his homily.

"There must be co-operation of all who believe in God, knowing that authentic religiousness, far from placing individuals and peoples in conflict with one another, rather pushes them to together build a world of peace."

Last month, the Pope issued a more elaborate and critical message taking political leaders in the Middle East and beyond to task for failing the people of the region.

"Until those in positions of responsibility undergo a veritable revolution in the way they use their power and go about securing their people's welfare, it is difficult to imagine how progress toward peace can be made," he said.

He made no explicit mention of the possibility of war with Iraq, although he referred generally in his homily to the "threatening tensions of the moment" and the need to solve them with "peaceful means."

But as a reminder of the Vatican's stepped-up opposition to any war with Baghdad, the Vatican newspaper headlined its New Year's Day editions with: "There is no alternative to peace."