January 20, 2003	Monday	Ziqa'ad 16, 1423

VATICAN CITY, Jan 19: Leaders of world religions appealed to believers in all faiths to work to avert a conflict in Iraq as anti-war protests gathered pace around the world.

“As conflicts divide neighbours and nations and the threat of war hangs over us like a shadow, too many people see and employ religion as a force of divisiveness and violence, rather than a force for unity and peace,” the representatives said in a concluding statement issued Saturday at the end of a symposium.

The Vatican-sponsored meeting was attended by representatives of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism and Sikhism.

The 38 leaders from 15 countries who attended the three-day meeting appealed for diplomacy and persuasion to correct injustices and respond to international threats.

Pope John Paul has put the Vatican on a diplomatic collision course with the United States by condemning the possibility of a war, saying it was avoidable and would be a “defeat for humanity”.

In an address to diplomats last week, the leader of the world’s one billion Roman Catholics said conflict always had to be considered the very last option.

GERMANY’S BISHOPS: Germany’s Catholic bishops are to jointly condemn the looming war in Iraq in a declaration, the spokeswoman for the Conference of German Catholic Bishops said on Sunday.

Martina Hoehns said the text would be finalized when the heads of the 27 German dioceses meet near the southern city of Wuerzburg on Monday. Pope John Paul II has already spoken out publicly against the war.

Lutheran leaders have also announced anti-war church services and other events.

One will be held Monday at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in downtown Berlin and repeated regularly. The church is mostly a bombed-out shell with a small chapel reconstructed in the middle as a reminder of the terrors of the Second World War.

The news magazine Der Spiegel in the edition generally available Monday quoted the chairman of the conference, Cardinal Karl Lehmann, as calling every offensive war “morally reprehensible”. There was widespread public dismay in Germany that an ally, the United States, is willing to start the war.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder won re-election in September with a promise to keep Germany out of any war, and has enjoyed bipartisan support on the issue ever since, with polls showing anti-war sentiment strong throughout German society.

The Catholic bishop of Trier, Reinhard Marx, has appealed for Christians to take the lead in a “new peace movement” in Germany.—Reuters/dpa