Analysis: Vatican Sends Message To Saddam Hussein, Plans To Host Iraqi Foreign Ministers

Morning Edition: February 11, 2003

BOB EDWARDS, host:

This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Bob Edwards.

A special Vatican envoy is in Baghdad today, carrying a message from Pope John Paul to Saddam Hussein that recognizes the urgency of the situation Iraq is facing. For weeks, the pope has been waging a vocal campaign against war in Iraq. On Friday, he plans to receive Iraq's deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz. John Allen is Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter.

Any idea what this message contains?

Mr. JOHN ALLEN (National Catholic Reporter): Well, yes. Off the record, Vatican officials have given us to understand that it will be a fairly pointed appeal to Hussein to cooperate with the weapons inspectors and also with the international community, the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441, and to do whatever it takes, in effect, to avoid conflict. Now the language will probably be slightly more indirect than that, but that certainly will be the point.

EDWARDS: Of course, the pope opposes war and urges peaceful settlements of conflicts all around the world. Is this case any different?

Mr. ALLEN: I think it is. I think it's different for a couple of reasons. One is the unusual level of direct diplomatic involvement by the pope. I mean, as you say, he has dispatched a special ambassador. He is going to be receiving Hussein's number two official. We understand that there is a possibility he may be receiving Kofi Annan from the United Nations next week, and there has been this steady drumbeat of papal commentary. Rarely does a day go by when the pope does not quite vocally speak against this war, and so he has sort of created a buzz, if you will, around sort of papal diplomatic activity.

I think the other thing is the remarkably blunt language that Vatican officials have been using to criticize American policy and the prospect of a war in Iraq. I mean, you have Archbishop Renato Martino, who is the pope's point person on issues of justice and peace, who has openly speculated that the United States may be acting on the basis of its oil interests and has strongly suggested that the consequences of any attack on Iraq would be disastrous for the Middle East and for the Western relationship with Islam. The pope's foreign minister, a Frenchman by the name of Jean-Louis Tauran, has been quoting an Arab foreign minister to the effect that a war in Iraq would open the gates of hell. And of course, the Vatican, they don't use that kind of language casually. So I think there is a full-court diplomatic press under way from the Vatican on the war that is unusual.

EDWARDS: Does the Vatican see no merit in the Bush administration's argument that this would be a preemptive war, to prevent Saddam Hussein from ever using chemical or biological weapons again, or to give them to terrorists?

Mr. ALLEN: Well, look, the Vatican is no fan of weapons of mass destruction. I mean, whenever the international community comes up with a new arms control initiative, they are always among the first signatories. I mean, they were one of the first three or four signatories on the Convention to Ban Landmines, for example. But I think the Vatican's position is that the proper way to go about the elimination of these weapons is through sort of steadfast international initiatives, working through the mechanism of the United Nations and arms control agencies. In a last resort, in which you have an aggressor nation that possesses weapons and poses a real and present danger, the Vatican would countenance the use of force. I mean, they're not pacifists. They did, for example, approve the so-called humanitarian intervention in Kosovo, to protect the civilian there. But I think their position is that in the present circumstances, that last resort moment has not yet arrived.

EDWARDS: Has the Iraq issue strained relations between the Vatican and the American Catholic Church?

Mr. ALLEN: Well, I don't think it's strained relations with the American Catholic Church, because although, at the moment, at least, polls show that a majority of American Catholics, like a majority of Americans generally, might support some use of force in Iraq, the American Bishops' Conference has taken a position much closer to the Vatican's, that is, that they adopted a statement saying that at the moment, they do not see the conditions where a just war in Iraq would exit.

I think where there may be some strain is in the relationship between the Vatican and the Bush administration, which up to this point, has been an exceptionally warm relationship. I mean, we all know that the electoral politics of the United States at the moment are such that the battleground tends to be over those states that have high pockets of Catholic voters, and George Bush made a real press for those votes in his first campaign. He will certainly do so again. He has done everything possible to reach out to Catholics since being elected, through support for faith-based initiatives, through his stand on public funding for abortion, through his stand on stem-cell research, and there is great appreciation for all of that in the Vatican.

Now this imbroglio, this dispute over a conflict in Iraq is really putting the first serious test to that relationship, and I know that there are some in the Bush administration who are, frankly, quite annoyed and even hurt at what they see as some of the anti-American rhetoric coming out of the Vatican on this issue.

EDWARDS: Thank you very much.

Mr. ALLEN: Bob, it's my pleasure.

EDWARDS: John Allen is the Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter.

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