VATICAN CITY, Dec 12: Pope Benedict said on Tuesday that states had to set ethical limits to what could be done to protect their people from terrorism and that some countries had flouted international humanitarian law in recent wars.

In an annual message for the Roman Catholic Church’s World Day of Peace, to be celebrated on Jan 1, which is traditionally sent to governments and international organisations, the pope repeated his often stated belief that war in God’s name was never justified.

He also decried other threats to peace, such as hunger, poverty, environmental harm and regimes which he said were persecuting Christians or imposing a single religion on their people. “...the new shape of conflicts, especially since the terrorist threat unleashed completely new forms of violence, demands that the international community reaffirm international humanitarian law, and apply it to all present-day situations of armed conflict, including those not currently provided for by international law,” he wrote.

He called for a review of what states could ethically do to protect their citizens while still trying to respect international humanitarian law, ‘which has not been consistently implemented in certain recent situations of war’. “...the scourge of terrorism demands a profound reflection on the ethical limits restricting the use of modern methods of guaranteeing internal security,” he wrote.—Reuters