Pope to send Cardinal to discuss Iraq crisis with Bush

Intensifying his diplomatic efforts to avert a war against Iraq, Pope John Paul II is sending a special envoy to Washington to meet US President George W Bush, the Vatican said today.

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the pontiff has designated Cardinal Pio Laghi, an Italian who for years served as the Holy See’s ambassador to the US.

“The cardinal, who will depart from Rome in the next few days, will be the bearer of a message from his Holiness and will have the opportunity to illustrate the position and the initiatives undertaken by the Holy See to contribute to disarmament and to peace in the Middle East,” Navarro-Valls said.

No exact date for the visit was announced, but an Italian news agency, Ap.Biscom, said Laghi would leave for Washington on Monday.

The Rome-based US Embassy to the Holy See said it had no comment on the news.

As part of his diplomatic efforts to head off a war, John Paul last month dispatched to Iraq a French cardinal, who, bearing a message from the pontiff, met Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

The Pope has said a war would be a “defeat for humanity,” and Vatican officials have argued that there is no moral justification for a preventive war against Iraq.

The Vatican also fears a US-led attack on Iraq would be seen by Muslims as a Christian crusade against them, leading to deteriorating relations between both sides and leaving Christians vulnerable to possible retaliation.

Highly respected across much of the globe for his moral authority, John Paul, in addition to his own diplomatic moves, has been sought out by top political leaders, both those opposed to the war and those who maintain that armed intervention might be the only way to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.

In recent days, John Paul has held private talks in the Vatican with two of Bush’s staunchest allies in the front against Iraq, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar. Preceding them was the foreign minister of Germany, which has opposed war, and Iraq’s deputy premier.

John Paul had championed diplomatic initiatives in past crises, including in the months before the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq and the 1999 NATO bombing campaign to halt Serbia’s assault on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. But his current resolve to avert a new war against Iraq has seen the 82-year-old, ailing Pope even more strenuously opposing military action.