Syria's Assad tells Pope of Arab pain under Israel

Syrian President Bashar Assad told Pope John Paul yesterday that the suffering of Arabs under Israeli occupation was similar to the pain endured by Jesus Christ.

"There are always those who seek to recreate the (Jesus's) journey of suffering and pain among people," Assad said at a welcoming ceremony for the Pope as he arrived in Damascus on the second leg of a pilgrimage retracing the steps of Saint Paul.

"We see our brothers in Palestine being killed and tortured. We see that justice is being violated, lands are being occupied in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine," Assad said, clearly referring to, but not naming, Israel.

"We see them attacking sacred Christian and Muslim places in Palestine...They try to kill the principle of religions in the same mentality in which they betrayed Jesus Christ." Assad, 35, urged the Pontiff to stand up to Israel. "We feel that in your prayers, in which you recall the suffering of Jesus Christ, you will remember that there is a people in Lebanon, the Golan (Heights) and Palestine that is suffering from subjugation and persecution," he said.

"We expect you to stand by them against the oppressors so that they can regain what was unjustly taken from them." Pope John Paul responded to Assad by reading a prepared statement urging all sides in the Arab-Israeli conflict to seek peace, but also containing indirect criticism of Israel.

"It is time to return to the principles of international legality; the banning of acquisition of territory by force, the right of peoples to self-determination, respect for the resolutions of United Nations and the Geneva convention," he said, repeating a statement he made last January at the Vatican.

Although he did not mention Israel by name, that section of his speech appeared to be a reference to the Jewish state, which is locked in conflict with the Arabs over the return of occupied land in exchange for peace.

Syria wants Israel to pull out fully from the Golan Heights, a plateau seized by the Israeli army in the 1967 war, in any peace deal. Assad, who succeeded his late father Hafez Assad last July, stirred a storm in Israel last March when he likened Israeli society to the Nazis in a speech.