NEWS STORY: Pope meets with Arafat; urges confidence in building Middle East peace

c. 1999 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY _ Pope John Paul II met Friday (Feb. 19) with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and urged renewed confidence in efforts to build a lasting peace in the Middle East. Describing the atmosphere at Arafat’s seventh audience with the pope as”cordial,”Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said,”There was an exchange of […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Pope John Paul II met Friday (Feb. 19) with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and urged renewed confidence in efforts to build a lasting peace in the Middle East.

Describing the atmosphere at Arafat’s seventh audience with the pope as”cordial,”Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said,”There was an exchange of views on the present situation in the Middle East and, in particular, on the prospects for the evolution of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.” Arafat, who was accompanied by the mayor of Bethlehem, Hanna Nasser, reiterated his invitation to the pope to visit the city of Bethlehem, now under Palestinian control, for celebrations of the millennium, the spokesman said. He said John Paul replied,”Yes, I hope to be there.” During the private 15-minute meeting, the pope and Arafat, president of the Palestine National Authority, paid”special attention to the city of Jerusalem,”Navarro-Valls said.


But he said they did not discuss a proposal Arafat made Thursday that Jerusalem become the joint capital of Israel and the Palestinian state he plans to declare, possibly as early as May.

The status of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital is a major impediment to a papal visit to the holy land. John Paul has long urged international guarantees that the city and its sacred monuments remain open to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.”East Jerusalem could be the capital of a Palestinian state and West Jerusalem that of Israel,”Arafat said Thursday. The model, he said, should be Rome, which is capital of both Italy and the Holy See, and not Cold War”Berlin with a wall in the middle.” Arafat spoke at the opening of the United Nations-sponsored”International Forum: Bethlehem 2000″at the headquarters of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

The conference, organized by the Committee for the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, did not include any representatives of Israel because, Arafat said,”I didn’t have them invited.” Arafat used the forum to complain that Israeli settlements have”encircled”Bethlehem,”isolating it from its sister, the holy city of Jerusalem.” He also appealed for increased financial aid to make Bethlehem more attractive for the estimated 2 million tourists _ and their dollars _ expected to visit the Holy Land during the observance of the Christian millennium. Most of those are expected to stay, and spend most of their dollars, in Jerusalem _ a 15-minute drive away.

Following Arafat’s audience, the pope met with leaders of the forum, including Ibra Deguene Ka, Senegal’s U.N. ambassador and chairman of the committee, and Sir Kieran Prendergast, U.N. undersecretary general for political affairs.

Although Bethlehem’s history since the birth of Jesus”has often been marked by violence, the city still stands as a promise of peace and an assurance that the human hope for peace is not in vain,”John Paul said.”The great jubilee, which will celebrate the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem, invites us to look forward in hope to a world in which peace will be secure. We must all work for a future in which there will be no threat to peace from among the worshippers of the one God, from any who bear the name of Christian or Jew or Muslim,”John Paul said.”In particular,”he said,”we must be confident that it is possible to build peace in the Middle East. The promise of peace made at Bethlehem will become a reality when the dignity and the rights of human beings made in the image of God are acknowledged and respected.” Arafat also met with Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state, and Archbishop Jean Louis Tauran, who acts as the Vatican’s foreign minister, and lunched with Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro and Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini. He met Thursday with Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema.

Signing an agreement with the Italian association of businessmen, Confcommercio, for increased commercial exchanges between Italy and the Palestinian National Authority, Arafat praised the support Italy and the Vatican gave to Palestinians”during the difficult years”and called for continued help.

Confcommercio president Sergio Bille pledged the organization’s support in the creation of a modern infrastructure for commerce, services and the promotion investments.


In connection with Arafat’s visit and the forum, the city of Rome this week opened an exhibition celebrating Bethlehem as the”cradle of the jubilee.” The show includes art treasures from the Pitti Palace in Florence and the Franciscan Museum of the Custody of the Holy Land in Jerusalem _ two 17th century models with mother-of-pearl inlays of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, a 16th century Venetian painting of the nativity and two 19th century Neapolitan bas reliefs of the nativity on marble.”We can do many things together for the jubilee of 2000,”Arafat said.”It is a world event, not only Palestinian.”

DEA END POLK

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