06/09/2004

Iraq, Beslan dominate talk at St. Egidio conference

Milan, Sep. 06 (CWNews.com) - The continuing bloodshed in Iraq, and the terrorist massacre of Russian children in the town of Beslan, dominated discussion at an international conference in Milan, sponsored by the St. Egidio community, September 5- 7.

About 100 speakers, representing different nationalities and religious traditions, addressed the conference, in which participants of all descriptions joined in condemnation of the Beslan massacre. The conference is devoted to the role of religion in restoring a humane approach to world politics.

One round-table discussion on Iraq, held on September 6, descended into violent anti-American rhetoric. Muhammad Bashar Sharif, an Iraqi Sunni Muslim leader, charged that the American-led occupation has caused far more damage and oppression than the regime of Saddam Hussein. He charged-- without supporting evidence-- that US forces had caused hundreds of thousands of deaths in 1991 by using radioactive weapons, causing an epidemic of cancer. While those charges were being made, the US ambassador to the Holy See, James Nicholson, was speaking at a difference conference session, on the efforts to combat the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

Russian Orthodox Bishop Feofan Achourkov, whose Stavropol diocese includes the town of Beslan, captured the attention of the international gathering with a plea for concerted international action against terrorism. All religious and civil leaders, he said, should stand together in clear opposition to "the evil of terrorism, which can strike in New York, as in Madrid, in Beslan, and who knows where else?" The Orthodox bishop disclosed that Russian religious leaders had offered mediation in Beslan, but the terrorists refused any form of negotiation.

Bishop Achourkov-- who saw the carnage as Beslan, and prayed over the bodies of scores of slain children in the school building there-- said that "it is essential to make it universally understood that terrorists cannot be welcomed in any country." He added: "We must root out the sources of terrorism."

The Orthodox bishop insisted that the terrorists responsible for the Breslan massacre did not represent mainstream Islamic belief. And that insistence ws backed by Bishop Claudio Gugerotti, the apostolic nuncio in the Caucasus, who told Vatican Radio that local Muslim leaders were insisting that they did not support the terrorists, and seeking to avoid religious conflict.