04/09/2006

World religious leaders discuss Lebanon future

Christian, Jewish and Muslim religious leaders gathered in the central Italian town of Assisi Monday to discuss the crisis in Lebanon and how to foster dialogue between the world's faiths and cultures.

The Sant'Egidio Community, a Rome-based Catholic group, organises the annual two-day "International Meeting and Prayer for Peace" and this year takes place in the home of St. Francis.

It comes 20 years after the first such gathering of religious leaders headed by the late Pope John Paul II here in 1986.

In an address read out to participants during the meeting's opening ceremony, Pope Benedict XVI warned believers against the use of force in the name of religion, saying religion should unite rather than divide.

"No one should be allowed to use religious difference as an assumption or a pretext for belligerent attitudes towards other human beings," Benedict said.

Sant'Egidio said worldwide peace, religions and cultures in dialogue, would form the central theme of the meeting here.

"At a time marked by terrorism and war, as well as by efforts towards dialogue and reconciliation, religion has assumed a prominent role in public life and in conflicts of identity.

Religions are ever more exposed to the peril of becoming implements in the hands of extremists," Sant'Egidio said in a statement.

Prominent participants include the Grand Rabbi Cohen of Haifa, Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, Rector of Egypt's Al-Azhar University, as well as a number of Catholic cardinals. Orthodix Christian, Protestant, Buddhist and Shintoist leaders were also taking part.

Monday's agenda included a discussion on the future of Lebanon attended, among others, by Lebanon's Culture Minister Tarek Mitri.

Italian troops, meanwhile, arrived in Lebanon over the weekend as part of a planned 15,000-strong UN Interim Force (UNIFIL) contingent to be deployed in a buffer zone between Israel and Lebanon.