Global Policy Forum

By John Daniszewski

Diplomats have tried persuasion, peace activists have tried demonstrations, and now the pope is bringing his spiritual authority to bear to try to stop the march toward war on Iraq. Pope John Paul II's special envoy, retired Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, arrived in the Iraqi capital Tuesday carrying a personal message from the pontiff for President Saddam Hussein urging him to increase his regime's cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors.

Etchegaray also is expected to tell Hussein that the 82-year-old pope would like to travel to Iraq -- held to be the land of the prophet Abraham, who is considered the patriarch of three world religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The Roman Catholic pontiff had hoped to visit Iraq three years ago but canceled because Iraq said his safety couldn't be guaranteed amid U.S. and British patrols over the country's northern and southern "no-fly" zones.

Etchegaray arrived at the start of the four-day Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, or Feast of the Sacrifice, which gives families here a brief respite from their worries about war and deprivation in the months ahead. The Eid is traditionally a time for banquets, family outings and visits to the graves of departed loved ones. Those who have the means slaughter a camel, sheep or goat and share the meat with the less fortunate.

This year, the feast has taken on added poignancy because it might be the last holiday before a U.S.-led attack on the country. Most people here assume a war would cost civilian as well as military lives and inflict wider suffering by disrupting supplies of food, water and electricity.

In a statement at Saddam International Airport, the 80-year-old Etchegaray, a Basque Frenchman, said it was a "happy coincidence" he could come to Iraq for the Eid. "I am coming to encourage the Iraqi authorities to cooperate with the United Nations on the basis of international law," the cardinal said. "War is the last solution," he said, "and the worst solution."

The pope has been a strong critic of sanctions on Iraq since the 1991 Persian Gulf War as well as of a possible new war to topple Hussein's government, which the Bush administration says has violated human rights and developed and concealed weapons of mass destruction.

Etchegaray was expected to meet today with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz, a member of Iraq's Chaldean church, which has ties to the church of Rome. Aziz is flying to Italy later in the week to pray for peace at the shrine of St. Francis of Assisi and meet with the pope.

Despite the Eid holiday, U.N. weapons inspectors paid a surprise visit Tuesday to a former Iraqi nuclear site at Tuwaitha, nine miles south of Baghdad, to check air samplers capable of detecting particulate nuclear materials, said a statement issued by Hiro Ueki, the spokesman for the inspectors in Baghdad.