VATICAN CITY, March 31: Pope John Paul, in his Easter message to the world, said on Sunday it seemed that war had been declared on peace in the Holy Land and appealed for an end to what he called a spiral of abuse of power and killing.

The 81-year-old Pope has been hobbled by a bad knee but appeared in better condition than he has all week as he celebrated a mass for tens of thousands of people in a sunny St Peter’s Square.

He read his “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) message in a strong voice and underscored his pressing peace appeals by raising it often.

Before concluding he read the world Easter greetings in 62 languages, including Arabic and Hebrew.

The Vatican had no comment on an Italian newspaper report that the Pope, who turns 82 next month, may enter a Rome hospital next week to have an operation on his right knee, which has been afflicted by arthritis.

The Pope appeared to have few difficulties getting through the two-hour service, spending some of it standing on an altar platform surrounded by flowers.

In his message at the end of the service, the Pope spoke passionately of his deep concern for events in the Middle East, which he visited two years ago in a climate of relative peace.

Speaking in Italian, he called for an end to the “dramatic spiral of abuse of power and killings that bloody the Holy Land, plunged again in these very days into horror and despair.”

He continued: “It seems that war has been declared on peace. But nothing is resolved by war. It only brings greater suffering and death. Neither do retaliation and reprisals resolve anything.”

“The tragedy is truly great,” he said, raising his voice.

The Pope spoke as Israeli soldiers encircling Yasser Arafat’s headquarters traded fire with the Palestinian president’s defenders and Israel defied a United Nations call for it to lift the siege of Arafat’s base in Ramallah. A new suspected Palestinian suicide bombing also took place in Haifa, causing heavy loss of life.—Reuters