Paulson said that many leading trading companies in Iran with legitimate business operations were also involved in the illicit activities, and that it behooved any legitimate bank to realize that it was risky to continue doing even legitimate business with the companies. He called on banks around the world to be "vigilant" in opposing such risks and to avoid "inadvertently facilitating the kinds of activities that they wouldn't want to facilitate."

He said banks around the world also needed to stop doing business with North Korea, but added that North Korea was almost entirely isolated from the financial system. By contrast, Iran is still a major player globally.

The Treasury chief's comments came after he met with his counterparts from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan and the European Union, who had come for the annual gathering of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The comments appeared to reflect the emerging Bush administration strategy on Iran as efforts to impose sanctions by the UN Security Council have faltered. The administration charges that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program, a charge that Iran denies. Iran is also accused of transferring funds to Hezbollah and other Islamic militant organizations through regular commercial banks.

Last week, in what administration officials call a major escalation in the effort to squeeze Iran economically, the Treasury Department announced that Bank Saderat, a major bank in Iran, would no longer have even indirect access to the U.S. financial system.

After the announcement on Bank Saderat, two Treasury officials visited Europe to try to persuade regulators and banks to stop doing business with Bank Saderat and any other banks alleged to be involved in illicit activities. Some European banks have already curtailed their activities with Iran, but many leading banks have refused.

Also on the agenda at the meetings here was a discussion of the world economy, which Paulson said had grown in recent years at rates that he and others had not seen in a generation. Despite that, he acknowledged risks arising from the failure of recent global trade talks, high energy prices and the problem of what are called "economic imbalances."

That phrase is a euphemism for a broad set of problems, including the fact that the United States imports much more than it exports and has thus become the world's leading debtor, owing hundreds of billions of dollars to China, Japan and other trading partners.

The United States says this problem can be remedied by the trading partners importing more from the United States and by China allowing its currency to rise in value in relation to the dollar.

In a statement Saturday, the finance ministers of the Group of 7 leading industrial countries said: "Greater exchange-rate flexibility is desirable in emerging economies with large current-account surpluses, especially China."

[At the meetings here, China and Japan diverged with the United States over calls by Paulson for the IMF to police "misaligned" currencies, Bloomberg News reported.

[Paulson said the IMF should define "acceptable country-specific exchange rate policies." But China's central bank governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, said adoption of "command-style" surveillance may cause the fund to "deviate" from its mandate. The Bank of Japan governor, Toshihiko Fukui, said that beefing up the fund's currency role could "lead to focusing too narrowly on specific issues or specific countries."]

Europe may face higher rates

Officials from the European Central Bank stressed the economic strength of the euro-zone economy and inflation risks in a series of comments that suggested that interest rate rises are set to continue, Reuters reported Sunday.

"ECB rates are still extraordinarily low, both in monetary and real terms," the Bank of Italy governor, Mario Draghi, who is also on the ECB's Governing Council, said in Singapore.

The Iranians, she said, "are trying to send a message that it's too late, you can stop your attempts because it's too late. It's not too late. They have a few more months," she said.

"The world cannot afford a nuclear Iran," Livni said. "I believe that this is time for sanctions."

Iran, whose president last year called for Israel to be "wiped off the map," denies it is seeking nuclear weapons.

Livni said Israel would like to help strengthen the more moderate elements within the Palestinian Authority -- such as President Mahmoud Abbas -- at the expense of the militant Hamas movement, which swept to power after winning January elections.

Livni called on the international community to unite to make Hamas take certain steps as a prelude to talks. She did not specify the steps, but did mention Israel's demand that Hamas release an Israeli soldier captured in June.

"If the international community show determination in the next few weeks, maybe this is the moment in which Abu Mazen can be strengthened and Hamas will have to do something," she said, referring Abbas.

Abbas and Hamas, which seeks Israel's destruction, accused each other on Sunday of trying to derail a planned unity government that Palestinian officials hope will lift Western sanctions imposed after Hamas' election victory.

Abbas and Livni will both be in New York to attend the U.N. General Assembly in the coming week.

Hard-liners in Israel and the United States believe that only military action, or the credible threat of it, will now prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, with all that this would mean in terms of Israel's security and the balance of power in the strategically vital Middle East.

Fears that Bush might succumb to this Israeli and neoconservative pressure is beginning to cause serious alarm in Moscow, Beijing, Berlin, Paris, Rome and other world capitals where, as if to urge caution on Washington, political leaders are increasingly speaking out in favor of dialogue with Tehran and against the use of military force.

The quickening international debate over Iran's nuclear activities comes at a difficult time for Israel, where Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is fighting for his political life and for that of his ruling Kadima-Labor coalition.

The Iran problem is causing particular concern because it raises fundamental questions about the continued validity of the security doctrine Israel has forged over the past half century. A central plank of this doctrine is that, to be safe, Israel must dominate the region militarily and be stronger than any possible Arab or Muslim coalition.

The doctrine received a severe knock from Israel's inconclusive war in Lebanon, which demonstrated the country's vulnerability to Hizbullah's missiles and to the challenge of "asymmetric" guerrilla warfare. Israelis - especially those living in the more exposed north of the country where up to a million people took refuge in shelters - were shocked to discover that the war was being waged on Israel's home territory. All previous wars had been waged on Arab territory alone, and this had become something of an axiom for the Israeli military.

Another cause of anxiety for Israel's right wing - the settler movement, the nationalist-religious parties, the Likud and the right-dominated Kadima - is that Israel is coming under increasing international pressure to negotiate with the Palestinians, with a view to the creation of a Palestinian state. Influential voices are calling for an international conference - a sort of Madrid II - to re-launch the peace process.

Overcoming the crippling conflict between Hamas and Fatah, the Palestinians themselves are forming a national unity government, which will make it more difficult for Israel to claim that it has "no partner" with whom to negotiate.

Even British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whom the Israelis believed had been firmly co-opted into the US-Israeli camp, has recently called for the economic boycott of the Palestinians to be lifted once the unity government is in place.

This is all very bad news for right-wingers in Israel and their American supporters. They had hoped that the "land-for-peace" formula of UN Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967 had been finally buried. They want to break the Palestinian national movement - hence Olmert's unremitting assault on Gaza and the West Bank - rather than negotiate a political compromise with it. They want to seize more Palestinian land, not to withdraw to anything like the 1967 borders.

Such is the background to the outcry over Iran's nuclear activities. An Iranian bomb would end Israel's regional monopoly of nuclear weapons. It would force Israel to accept something like a balance of power, or at least a balance of deterrence.

Israelis claim vociferously that an Iranian bomb would pose an "existential threat" to their state. It is not clear whether they really believe that Iran might attack them and risk national suicide - an Armageddon scenario - or simply that they cannot contemplate a Middle East in which they would no longer be overwhelmingly strong, and in which their freedom to attack their neighbors and crush the Palestinians might be circumscribed.

When it destroyed Iraq's French-built nuclear reactor in 1981, Israel made clear that it would strike pre-emptively against the nuclear program of any hostile state in the region. The message which it and its friends are now addressing to President Bush is that if the US does not bomb Iran, Israel will have to do so.

This was put unambiguously in an article last week by Efraim Inbar, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University and a well-known right-wing Israeli analyst. "Israel," he wrote, "can undertake a limited pre-emptive strike. Israel certainly commands the weaponry, the manpower, and the guts to effectively take out key Iranian nuclear facilities ... While less suited to do the job than the United States, the Israeli military is capable of reaching the appropriate targets in Iran. With more to lose than the US if Iran becomes nuclear, Israel has more incentive to strike."

These views are echoed by pro-Israeli writers in the United States, such as Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute. "Offers of dialogue with Iran are a waste of time," she wrote. "Iran has pursued ruthless oppression at home, terrorism abroad and weapons proliferation, largely with impunity ... We have talked about talking for long enough, there must be other options." Ominously she warned Iran: "It is not wise to force American into a choice between doing nothing and doing everything. But it may come to that."

Commentators like Inbar and Pletka, and many others in America and Israel who share their hard-line views, are deeply suspicious of what they see as Iran's duplicity, which they fear has seduced the Europeans. They are outraged by the negotiations which Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, is pursuing with Ali Larijani, Iran's principal nuclear negotiator.

The reported suggestion that Iran might suspend uranium enrichment for a month or two is seen as a trick to divide the Security Council and remove the threat of sanctions. They suspect that the international community is edging toward a position of allowing Iran to produce nuclear fuel under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. For the hard-liners, this would be one step away from tolerating an Iranian bomb in the not too distant future.

The real fear of the hard-liners is that the United States might agree to direct talks with Iran which would legitimize the theocratic regime, vastly increase Iran's stature as the dominant power in the Gulf, and eventually downgrade Israel as America's exclusive regional ally.

For Washington's neoconservatives, the battle to shape US policy toward Iran is a crucial test of their dwindling influence. They played a decisive role in persuading the US to make war on Iraq. They clamored for the destruction of the Hamas government in the Palestinian territories. They gave fervent support to Israel's war on Hizbullah, relentlessly portrayed as a "terrorist movement" and as the armed outpost of Iran.

But the neoconservatives have lost ground in Washington. The war in Iraq has turned into a strategic catastrophe, with another disaster looming in Afghanistan. Anti-Americanism in the Arab and Muslim worlds is at record levels. Leading neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby have left the administration. For the remaining neoconservatives - and their standard-bearer, William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, losing the argument over Iran could be a terminal blow.

Their ultimate nightmare is that the United States may have to come to rely on Iran to help stabilize the dangerously chaotic situation in both Afghanistan and Iran. The visit to Tehran this week of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is, from their point of view, a ghastly pointer in that direction.

"The American and the Zionist aim is to undermine the glorious triumph of Islam's children of Lebanese Hezbollah, which annulled the undefeatable legend of the Israeli army and foiled the Satanic and colonialist American plot," it said.

Fellow hardline daily Kayhan, whose editor-in-chief is appointed by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said there were signs of Israeli inteference aimed at creating conflict between Islam and Christianity.

"There are many signs that show that Pope Benedict XVI's remarks regarding the great prophet of Islam are a link in a connected chain of a Zionist-American project," it said.

"The project, which was created and executed by the Zionist minority, aims at creating confrontation between the followers of the two great divine religions."

In a speech in his native Germany on Tuesday, the pope spoke of a link between Islam and jihad, or "holy war", and quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor who said innovations introduced by the Prophet Mohammed were "evil and inhuman".

The pope on Saturday apologised for causing any offence to Muslims but did not retract his remarks, arguing they had been misinterpreted.

The nun, in her mid-sixties, identified as Sister Leonella Sgorbati, was shot dead with her bodyguard by two gunmen at the hospital for mothers and children in northern Mogadishu.

The bodyguard died instantly, but the nun, from the Missionaries of the Consolation order based in Nepi near Rome, was rushed into an operating theatre after being hit by three or four bullets in the chest, stomach and back.

"She died in the hospital treatment room," a doctor, Ali Mohamed Hassan, said. "She was shot outside the hospital, going to her house just across the gate."

Islamic security chiefs said two people had been arrested over the shootings.

In a public statement, made during the Angelus, his traditional Sunday address, the Pope distanced himself from the medieval quote he had used last week in which the Prophet Muhammad was said to have brought only "evil and inhuman" things "such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".

Speaking from the balcony of Castel Gandolfo, the Pope's summer retreat, Benedict XVI stressed that the words of Manuel Paleologos II, a 14th-century Byzantine Christian emperor, did not reflect his own personal opinion.

The head of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics said: "At this time I wish also to add that I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims...These [words] were in fact a quotation from a medieval text which do not in any way express my personal thought."

The Pope noted that the Vatican secretary of state on Saturday had issued a statement trying to explain his words, which he delivered last Tuesday in a speech during a pilgrimage to his native Germany.

He added: "I hope that this serves to appease hearts and to clarify the true meaning of my address, which in its totality was and is an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with great mutual respect."

Last night, however, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt demanded a "clear apology". Mohammed Habib, the movement's deputy leader, said: "It does not rise to the level of a clear apology and, based on this, we're calling on the Pope of the Vatican to issue a clear apology that will decisively end any confusion."

Mr Habib had earlier described the Pope's remarks as a "sufficient apology".

Yesterday, Mehmet Aydin, a Turkish state minister, said the Pope seemed to be saying he was sorry for the outrage but not necessarily the remarks themselves. He said: "You either have to say this 'I'm sorry' in a proper way or not say it at all. Are you sorry for saying such a thing or because of its consequences?"

The uproar had raised question marks about whether a papal visit to Turkey in November could go ahead, but the Turkish government, while calling his remarks "ugly", said there were no plans to call it off.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, also entered the debate yesterday when he urged world religious leaders to show "responsibility and restraint" - a reference to Pope Benedict XVI's remarks about Islam and the ensuing anger among Muslims.

Mr Putin went on to say that he hoped that "the leaders of the main world faiths will have sufficient strength and wisdom to avoid any extremes in relations between faiths".

In Palestine yesterday, more churches in the occupied West Bank were attacked in reaction to the speech. The attacks followed similar incidents on Friday and Saturday and caused minor damage but no injuries. In the town of Tubas outside Jenin, a group of Palestinians set fire to a Roman Catholic church, causing minor damage before the flames were put out.

A Roman Catholic church in the town of Tulkarm also sustained damage in a fire. Witnesses said they saw a man set the fire in the early morning. However, no-one claimed responsibility for either of the attacks.

In an attempt to calm concerns in the Muslim world, the Vatican announced that the papal nuncios - ambassadors - to Muslim nations had been issued with translation of the speech and would be addressing the matter with political leaders. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the secretary of state, said: "We have asked our nuncios in Muslim countries to take the Pope's message and explain his declarations to the political and religious authorities. They will give a clarification of the Pope's words and extinguish the flames of misunderstanding."

Senior officials inside the Catholic Church were debating that the current crisis could have been averted if Pope Benedict had not demoted Britain's most senior figure in the Vatican. Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, from Birmingham, had been head of "inter- religious dialogue" at the Vatican since 2002 and was the Pope's top expert on Islamic affairs.

However, in February Pope Benedict made him a papal nuncio in Cairo.

Yesterday a Vatican diplomat said: "Michael, or Fitz, as we know him, is an expert on Muslim affairs and this would not have happened if he had still been around.

"He would have known that saying something like this would have been a red rag to a bull but for some reason the Pope got rid of him and it was the worst mistake he made."

Father Thomas Reese, author of Inside the Vatican, said shortly after Archbishop Fitzgerald was demoted: "The Pope's worst decision so far has been the exiling of Archbishop Fitzgerald. He was the smartest guy in the Vatican on relations with Muslims. You don't exile someone like that, you listen to them."

Last night, when contacted in Lourdes, where he is attending a conference, Archbishop Fitzgerald said: "I have been away and not really followed all this so it would not be fair for me to comment.

"I hope that Pope Benedict's apology smoothes things over in the Muslim world - other than that I have nothing to say."

Professor Giuseppe Alberigo, of the Institute of Religious Science in Bologna, said it was the first time a Pope had said sorry, and compared Benedict XVI to John Paul II.

He said: "It is the first time that a Pope has apologised and tried to appease criticism for something he has said.

"Certain themes should be spoken about more prudently as the Crusades have never been forgotten. Pope John Paul II would never have said anything similar."

"I base a lot of my foreign policy decisions on some things that I think are true. One. I believe there's an Almighty. And, secondly, I believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody's soul, regardless of what you like or where you live, to be free." George W. Bush, April 24, 2006

"I am pro-Israeli, not because of political expediency, but because I believe Israel is the fulfilment of Biblical prophecy." Jimmy Carter, Democratic presidential candidate, 1976

"It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law, if it acquires the political power to do so..." Robert A. Heinlein

The role of religion in political and geopolitical affairs has taken center stage in many periods in history, with disastrous results. Religion can be rewarding for individuals as a source of private morality and meditation. But when politicians and leaders start using religion for political purposes, disasters inevitably follow. Against all expectations, the mixture of religion and politics is presently making a powerful come back, first, in the Middle East, where Judaism and the various strains of Islam are fighting each other; secondly, in Islamist terrorism which is partly motivated by Islamic fundamentalism; and, thirdly, in the United States, where religious fundamentalism wields increasing power in the political arena.

President Thomas Jefferson, probably the greatest American president, thought that there should be a "wall of separation" between the government and religious organizations in a democratic republic. It was his understanding that such a wall of separation between church and state had been erected with the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that forbids the establishment of a state-supported religion. In that spirit, there is a current law, the 1954 Revenue Act, 501 (c)(3), which states that a tax-exempt religious organization cannot get involved in partisan politics without losing its privileged tax-exempt status. The law says that organizations risk loosing their tax-exempt status if they "participate in, or intervene in ...any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for political office."

Why is the introduction of religion into politics a dangerous development? Essentially, because religion tends to paint the world in black and white, and is inimical to compromise, essential for peace in human affairs and a democratic form of government. When religious extremists acceed to positions of power, the risk of social strife and political conflicts increases markedly. Armed with metaphysical certitudes, the religious leader cannot help but divide humanity between Good and Evil, between "those who are with us, and those who are against us." This allows him to demonize his enemies and to proclaim that he is 100 percent in the right and others are 100 percent in the wrong. All errors are on one side and all the pious justifications on the other. Between friend and foe, between the pious and the infidel, there is no middle ground. There is only a wall of hatred and distrust that violence or warfare help to cement. Dictatorship, not democracy, is the ultimate result when religion takes over a government.

The same applies internationally. Indeed, to have peace among nations, even in the best of times, there must be some mechanism of mediation and a system of international law. For instance, in the 5th Century, after the demise of the Roman empire, the Catholic Church and its pope filled the institutional gap and were often called upon, not always successfully, to mediate international conflicts between states. A case in point was the mediation that Pope Alexander VI carried on between Spain and Portugal to divide the newly discovered territories of the Americas. The Pope issued a papal bull on May 4, 1493, dividing the New World between the former and latter countries. After minute negotiations, the Treaty of Tordesillas drew an imaginary line on the globe. Going from north to south, and situated at 370 leagues or about 800 miles west of the Azores, it delineated the oceanic world between Spanish (western) and Portuguese (eastern) spheres of influence. That is why Brasilians speak Portuguese today, while most Latin Americans speak Spanish.

After the last war of religion, from 1618 to 1648, i.e. the Thirty Years' War between European Catholics and Protestants, the world became more secular, less fanatical and more civilized; henceforth, religion was kept out of major international conflicts. The Charter of the then new world order was the Treaty of Westphalia, which was signed at the end of the Thirty Years War.

The Treaty of Westphalia incorporated four basic principles: 1- The principle of the sovereignty of nation-states and the concomitant fundamental right of political self-determination for peoples; 2- the principle of (legal) equality between nation-states; 3- the principle of internationally binding treaties between states; and, 4- the principle of non-intervention of one state into the internal affairs of other states.

That is why the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) is so crucial in the history of international political relations. This important treaty formed the basis for the modern international system of independent nation-states. In fact, it marked the beginning of an international community of law between sovereign states of equal legal standing, guaranteeing each other their independence and the right of their peoples to political self-determination. The two most innovative principles being proclaimed were the principle of sovereignty and the principle of equality among nations. They were truly political and legal innovations for the time.

The Treaty defined these new principles of sovereignty and equality among states in order to establish a durable (eternal) peace and friendship among them, within a mutually acceptable system of international law, based on internationally binding treaties. This was a revolutionary approach to international relations because, for the first time, it established a system that respected peoples' rights and which relied on international law, rather than on brute force and the right of the strongest to regulate interactions between states.

A fifth principle was also present in the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, and it is the idea that in order to achieve an enduring peace, magnanimity, concessions and cooperation had to be shown by the victorious parties in an open conflict. It was the beginning of a genuine international constitution for humanity, the advent of a new international order and a big step forward for Western civilization.

After the Thirty Years War, religion became less and less a politically motivating force behind conflicts between European states, being replaced by considerations of national interest. In a way, after 1648, international affairs became "secularized" and somewhat devoid of religious considerations.

It is to be deplored that some current day politicians would like to push international law aside and bring the world back to what it was before 1648. Nowadays, the only widely accepted international dispute resolution mechanism is the United Nations. Members of the currrent American administration have taken steps to undermine this institution, but they have nothing to replace it. Indeed, under George W. Bush, it can be feared that the United States is falling into the Old World pattern which prevailed before the American Revolution and the French Revolution, that is, the existence of an unhealthy symbiosis between political power and religion.

The separation of Church and State brought the greatest advance in Western civilization in the last three hundred years. Democracy and freedom from state intervention in religious matters are the two underpinnings of such a demarcation. What is most ironical is that many Europeans chose in the past to migrate to the United States in order to flee a Europe corrupted by the very mixture of state religion and politics. That the same debilitating corruption is coming back in contemporary U.S. should be a concern to all.

Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@ yahoo.com.

He is the author of the book 'The New American Empire'.

Visit his blog site at www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.

Author's Website:www.thenewamericanempire.com/

"Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." These were not the Pope's words, but those of an obscure Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologos, back in the 14th century. And yes, the Pope did make it clear he was offering a quotation. Even so, these words fell from the lips of the spiritual leader of a billion Christians without anything like enough qualification. There was no phrase distancing himself from the claim that Muhammad was responsible for evil. It's little surprise, therefore, that the remarks have roused anger and demands for a personal apology.

Christopher Tyerman's latest book on the Crusades, God's War, argues persuasively that analogies between the Crusades and the present global conflict are often overdrawn and historically dubious. That may be so. But it's an argument that doesn't cut much ice with millions of Muslims. After all, it was one of Benedict's predecessors, Urban II, who first summoned a Christian jihad against Islam. And it's born-again Christians who have been at the forefront of support for the invasion of Iraq, the occupation of Palestinian lands by Israel, and the whole "reorganisation" of the Middle East - a catastrophe in which many thousands of Muslims have lost their lives.

Any comments by a Christian leader that touch upon this wound are bound to be interpreted from every possible angle. The Pope must have known this. If millions of Muslims were offended by the scribblings of a few unknown Danish cartoonists, it's pretty obvious the enormous potential for harm that might flow from a few ill-judged comments by the vicar of Rome.

Furthermore, the Pope has form on all of this. Just a few months before he was elected, he spoke out against Muslim Turkey joining the EU. Christian Europe must be defended, he argued. It didn't go down well at the time with Muslim leaders. But what makes his comments from Bavaria doubly insensitive is that Munich and its surrounding towns are home to thousands of Gastarbeiter, many from Turkey, who are often badly treated by local Germans and frequently subjected to racism. It won't be lost on them that Manuel II ran his Christian empire from what is now the Turkish city of Istanbul. And reference to that time, in circumstances such as these, has the unmistakable whiff of Christian triumphalism.

For the most part, the Pope's address was a scholarly exercise that sought to challenge the idea that rationality is intrinsically and necessarily secular. We must "overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable", he insisted. Most Christians would agree. But even here there was a sharp criticism of Islam buried beneath the scholarly rhetoric. For the Pope argued that in Muslim teaching, because "God is absolutely transcendent", He is "not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality". In other words, there is no reasoning in or with Islam. Which, surely, is another way of the Pope saying how dangerous he thinks Islam is.

This is why the Pope's remarks look rather more than just a slip or a casual mistake. The speech concludes with a further reference to the views of the Byzantine emperor: " 'Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God,' said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures."

Blog sites have been buzzing with the thought that the Pope may have the president of Iran in mind when he speaks of Manuel's Persian interlocutor. But we don't need to speculate upon a contemporary casting for this speech to recognise its dangers. For in claiming that Islam may be beyond reason, and then to claim that to act without reason is to act contrary to the will of God, is pretty close to the assertion that this religion is godless. And that's not how different faiths ought to speak to each other - especially when we all have each other's blood on our hands.

As it is written: "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?"