From Iran Focus:

Telegraph.co.uk

By Malcolm Moore in Rome

Benedict XVI has cancelled meetings with seven world leaders to avoid an encounter with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.

Mr Ahmadinejad is one of 40 heads of state arriving in Rome on Tuesday for a vital United Nations summit on the world’s food crisis.

Mr Ahmadinejad was keen to meet Benedict XVI, after writing to him two years ago on the subject of spirituality and the need for dialogue between Islam and Christianity.

Relations between Iran and the Holy See are warming, and Mr Ahmadinejad said the Vatican was a “positive force for justice and peace” in April after meeting with the new nuncio to Iran, Archbishop Jean-Paul Gobel. Benedict is also thought to have the support of several leading Shia clerics, including Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Iraq.

A delegation of eight Iranians from the Islamic Culture and Relations Organisation, including Mahdi Mostafavi, one of Mr Ahmadinejad’s inner circle, came to Rome for a two-day meeting at the end of April and agreed religion should be a force for peace.

However, the Pope was keen to avoid the glare of publicity that would have been triggered by a one-to-one meeting with Mr Ahmadinejad.

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