Pope 'frustrated' by conflict with Iraq

The start of war on Iraq yesterday was "a tragic initiative" said a senior cardinal who Pope John Paul sent to Washington to try to convince President George W. Bush to avoid conflict.

The Pontiff was left feeling frustrated, said Cardinal Pio Laghi.

The cardinal, who met Bush in Washington two weeks ago, told Reuters in a telephone interview that both he and the pope felt that war could have been averted.

"This is a tragic initiative and we pray that it can be eased without so many victims," said Cardinal Laghi, a now-retired veteran diplomat who worked for years in the United States as Vatican ambassador to Washington.

Cardinal Laghi said the Pope, who only last Sunday made a passionate appeal to Bush and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to avoid war, was "frustrated" but now felt that prayer was necessary.

"Frustration, yes. Now I think we have to pray. We have no other way," Cardinal Laghi said of the conflict that has brought relations between the US and the Vatican to their lowest point in nearly 20 years.

The 81-year-old cardinal on March 5 handed President Bush a personal letter from the pope, who argued that diplomacy was the only way to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction and that the Vatican could not consider a conflict in Iraq a "just war".

Last Sunday the Pope urged Iraqi leaders to cooperate with the international community, and, after the US issued an ultimatum to Iraq, the Vatican said Washington and its allies would be held responsible before God and history.

"I think that was a very strong call," Cardinal Laghi said. "Now, we have to be close to our neighbours, particularly the people of Iraq. They are in the front line of suffering - mothers with their children running," he said.

But Cardinal Laghi also criticised Saddam for invoking a jihad or holy war after the dawn air strikes on Iraq.

"When I said my Mass this morning, I called on God, a God of peace. He invoked another God this morning, a God of war, and that is a terrible thing," he said.

Another senior Vatican official, Cardinal Roberto Tucci, said the war had been decided long ago.

"When everything is known, we will see that this war was already decided long before the result of the UN inspectors was known, and that is grave," he told Vatican Radio.

Cardinal Tucci, the former organiser of the pope's trips, called the conflict "a defeat of reason and of the Gospel."

The 82-year-old Pope, leader of one billion Catholics, has thrown himself into a vigorous diplomatic campaign and emerged as one of the most powerful anti-war voices.