c. 1998 Religion News Service

CAIRO, Egypt _ The Vatican’s top foreign affairs official wants to see Mideast peace negotiators put some urgency into their efforts to reach a new accord.”Peace cannot (wait) for years and years, because people are suffering, especially Palestinian people,”Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, a high-ranking official in the Vatican’s secretariat of state, told reporters Sunday (Oct. 18), at the end of a three-day visit that included meetings with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Foreign Minister Amr Moussa.

He made his comments before Monday’s terrorist attack on a bus stop in the southern Israeli town of Beersheba that wounded 64 Israelis.

Tauran also met with Egypt’s premier Islamic leader, Sheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantawi and repeated the Vatican’s longstanding call for international guarantees that access to Jerusalem’s holy sites be available to people of all faiths.

But Tauran left hanging the question of a possible millennium visit to the region by Pope John Paul II.”Who knows what will be in the picture in the year 2000?”he asked.”It is very difficult to make any plans for the time being.”John Paul has long made clear his desire to visit the Middle East in the millennium.

At the news conference the envoy sidestepped a question on reports of persecution toward Egypt’s Coptic Christians.

Tauran’s trip here, as negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat were taking place in the United States, was seen as another indication of John Paul’s effort to play a role in seeking a solution to the Middle East deadlock.

In the past two years, the pontiff has written letters to Arafat and Netanyahu calling for a resumption in peace negotiations, and made Middle East peace a centerpoint in his latest Easter address.

Tauran’s visit to Egypt also underscored the growing ties between the Holy See and Arab countries in the Middle East. Earlier this month, for example,

the Vatican announced it would establish diplomatic ties with Yemen. Similar relations have been forged with Jordan and Libya, and John Paul has visited Tunisia, Sudan and Lebanon in recent years.

Ties are decades old between the Vatican and Egypt, home to one of the Middle East’s largest Christian populations.

Moreover, the Holy See has sided with Arab countries in such controversial issues as lifting the United Nations embargo on Iraq, and against abortion rights during the 1994 United Nations population conference in Cairo, while its fledgling ties with Israel have their ups and downs. Most recently, the Vatican and Israel found themselves at odds over the appointment of Bishop Boutros Muallam, a Palestinian refugee, as Archbishop of Galilee.

While Tauran praised Egypt’s”positive”role in the Middle East, he refused to discuss its religious affairs at home.

Asked by reporters about recent allegations of persecution of Coptic Christians in southern Egypt, Tauran replied,”I am not aware of these facts.”Reports that police detained and tortured hundreds of Copts during the month of August surfaced in the media in recent weeks. They have jangled one of the country’s most sensitive political chords _ relations between the country’s Muslims and its Christian minority, whose numbers are the largest in the Middle East.

DEA END BYRANT