Jerusalem row mars Pope's pilgrimage

By Howard Goller

JERUSALEM (Reuters): Pope John Paul hoped to inspire peace during his pilgrimage to the Holy Land but he has been dogged at every step by one of the most intractable issues in the Middle East -- the future of Jerusalem.

From the moment he set foot in Israel last Tuesday, the Pope's declared intention of making a spiritual journey in the steps of Jesus has been marred by rival claims to the city holy to all three monotheistic religions.

The dispute remained polite until last Thursday when it burst into the open in an unseemly squabble between two leading holy men, a Jew and a Muslim, at a Pontifical Institute in Jerusalem.

The Pope expected to preside over an inter-faith meeting that would boost religious cooperation. Instead, politics barged in.

With the eyes of the world upon them, Israel's Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau and Muslim cleric Tayseer al-Tamimi staked rival claims to the holy city.

Asked last Friday for his view of the encounter, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said candidly that what happened "was a photograph of reality, of what's happening here".

Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), negotiating peace since 1993, have set a deadline of Sept. 13 for deciding Jerusalem's fate along with other tough issues.

But the debate that erupted at the inter-faith meeting supported skeptics who say the sides will not resolve the matter even in a hundred Septembers.

Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem, home to sites sacred Muslims, Jews and Christians, in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it. The move is not recognized internationally.

Palestinians -- most of them Muslims -- regard East Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state.

Each side has used the Pope's presence as a platform for its claim from the moment the Pontiff landed in Tel Aviv.

Israeli President Ezer Weizman said in his welcome speech that Jerusalem was Israel's "eternal capital".

As the Pope viewed an honor guard, the army band played "Jerusalem of Gold", a song symbolizing Israel's claim to the city.

In what looked like a direct response to Weizman, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat welcomed the Pope to "Palestine and its eternal capital Jerusalem" when the Pontiff visited Palestinian- ruled Bethlehem last Wednesday.

Rabbi Lau, the first clergyman to speak at the inter-faith meeting last Thursday, drew a rebuke from the audience when he ended his otherwise conciliatory remarks by appearing to equate the Pope's pilgrimage to Israel with "recognition of Jerusalem as its united, eternal capital".

Someone shouted: "The Pope never recognized that".

Next to speak, Tamimi got into a war of words over the issue, pleading for a just peace that would "create an independent state on national land...with Jerusalem as its eternal capital".

The dispute overshadowed the meeting even before it started. Jerusalem's leading Muslim cleric, the Grand Mufti, Ikrima Sabri, turned down the Pope's invitation in protest at the stance of Israel's chief rabbis on Jerusalem.

To complicate matters further, Israel also has a problem with the Vatican's stance on Jerusalem.

The Holy See supports a special statute for the city with international guarantees to safeguard its sacred character. Israel insists there is no need, saying it already guarantees the city's sacredness to Jews, Muslims and Christians.

The dispute at the inter-faith meeting spilled over into last Friday with the two sides giving contrary versions of what happened and each accusing the other of starting the row.

Interviewed by Reuters, Tamimi said: "I wanted to talk about justice and forgiveness, but when I noticed his speech was changed into political positions about Jerusalem, I just did not follow the text".

Israeli cabinet minister Haim Ramon rushed to defend Rabbi Lau, dismissing Tamimi's claim to spontaneity as foolishness.

"We knew ahead of time the contents of Sheikh Tamimi's speech. I received a message about it before Rabbi Lau spoke. I can say that Tamimi barely agreed to shake Rabbi Lau's hand behind the scenes," Ramon told Israel Radio.

In the end, the success of the meeting, and of the Pope's groundbreaking visit to the Holy Land, may be in the fact that they took place at all.

Just after last Thursday's incident, the Vatican's Navarro- Valls said he had yet to hear a translation of the Muslim cleric's remarks. But he saw some good in the encounter.

"It was a meeting in the same room of a rabbi and a Muslim leader. I don't know exactly how many years this was not possible before but both came to meet here in the presence of the Pope. That's something," the spokesman said.