CHURCH OF CYPRUS AND COMMUNITY OF SANT'EDIGIO HOST

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 NICOSIA 000958

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR EUR/SE, EUR/WE AND NEA/I

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PREL PHUM KIRF VT CY
SUBJECT: CHURCH OF CYPRUS AND COMMUNITY OF SANT'EDIGIO HOST
INTERFAITH DIALOGUE


1. (SBU) Summary: Political and religious leaders of numerous
nations and various faiths gathered in Nicosia November 16-18
at a conference organized by the Roman Catholic Community of
Sant'Egidio and hosted/financed by the Church of Cyprus.
Despite earlier misgivings that the event could morph into a
platform for Archbishop Chrysostomos II and other Church
officials to bash Turkey on the Cyprus Question, there was
only limited discussion of the "national issue" in the panel
sessions, breakout groups and in the Archbishop's opening and
closing statements; Turkish Cypriots, while invited to
attend, were noticeably absent. Most participants and
pundits claimed the conference provided a useful, faith-based
political and educational framework to promote inter-cultural
dialogue, discuss specific conflicts, and network amongst
themselves, although they also criticized the
ultra-nationalist Cypriot Archbishop Chrysostomos's
"questionable" peacemaker credentials as well as the event's
financial cost. A conference highlight was a panel
discussion on the situation of Christians and other
minorities in Iraq. Sant'Egidio's next interfaith dialogue
will take place in Cracow, Poland in 2009. This telegram is
a joint effort of Embassies Nicosia and Vatican City. End
summary.

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The Organizers and Their Mission
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2. (U) The Community of Sant'Egidio is a lay Catholic
association which the Holy See has officially recognized as
an ecclesiastical movement. While Sant'Egidio does not speak
for the Vatican, it is inspired by social teachings of the
Roman Catholic Church and has focused on service to the poor
and on conflict resolution. The Community estimates a
membership of 60,000 volunteers in seventy nations, and is
strongest in Italy. Its most prominent conflict resolution
success has been mediating an end to the civil war in
Mozambique in 1992. In addition to the president of the
Republic of Cyprus, the presidents of Albania, Malta and
Montenegro attended the conference in Nicosia on November
16-18, as did former FARC hostage in Colombia Ingrid
Betancourt, Israel's interior minister, and several Catholic
cardinals. The theme for this year's event was "Building a
Civilization of Peace, Cultures in Dialogue."

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Cyprus Question Always Just Below the Surface
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3. (U) Kicking off the conference, RoC President Demetris
Christofias pled for peace and justice in Cyprus, and
referred to the "cruel fate of refugees at the hands of
Turkish invaders." He also spoke positively, however, of the
efforts he and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat were
making to settle the Cyprus Problem. Christofias stressed
that in Cyprus there is respect for different religions and
cultures, and "our effort is to send messages from this
meeting all over the world for peace in Cyprus and
elsewhere." Religion had nothing to do with the present
situation here, the President claimed, and a settlement must
serve all the island's populations: ethnic Greeks, Turks,
Armenians, Maronites, and Latins (Roman Catholics). They had
lived in peace before 1974, and they could do so again, he
concluded.


4. (SBU) The conference host, Archbishop Chrysostomos II, has
a reputation on Cyprus as a nationalist, at least as much
politician as priest. In the run-up to the conference,
contacts and commentators questioned whether he was the right
man to lead an interfaith dialogue. As one put it, "This is
a person who's highly controversial when it comes to peace
and dialogue with the Turkish Cypriots; someone who was
against the start of direct talks and who suggested that if
the leaders fail to reach a solution, we should close the
checkpoints (between the government-controlled and Turkish
Cypriot-administered areas of the island)." The Archbishop
also has criticized recent efforts by the Ministry of
Education to revise and update the history books in schools,
which are highly ethnocentric.


5. (SBU) The Cyprus Problem bookended the conference, with
Christofias and Chrysostomos using their inaugural greetings
(and, in Chrysostomos' case, his final prayer as well) to
call for peace in Cyprus. However, at the heart of the
conference -- found in the panel discussions and breakout
groups -- the Cyprus issue was very rarely discussed and
instead the focus was on inter-cultural dialogue. Multiple
panels took up discussions on peaceful coexistence, touching
on specific conflict areas ranging from Israel/Palestine to

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Lebanon, Africa and Latin America. Other panels explored the
multifaceted relationships between religions, such as Islam
and Christianity and Christianity and Judaism. Panels on
prayer, ecumenism, monasticism, human rights and building
peace by combating poverty also took place. Most
participants claimed these panels, and the conference as a
whole, provided a useful, faith-based political and
educational framework to promote inter-cultural dialogue.

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The Future of Iraqi Christians
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6. (U) Visiting Embassy Vatican polchief attended the panel
on "Building a Culture of Peace in Iraq." The discussion
largely focused on the situation of Christians in that
country. Iraqi Muslim panelists Abdul Hadi Kadhim
Al-Hussaini (Secretary General of the Honored Sada
Association) and Ali Khalid Sarmad (Sunni Community of
Kirkuk) affirmed that Christians had a rightful place in an
Arab and Islamic Iraq. Iraqi Christian panelists, including
the Catholic Chaldean Archbishop of Kirkuk, Louis Sako, and
the Catholic-Latin Archbishop of Baghdad, Jean Benjamin
Sleiman, denounced extremists that fomented hate by calling
Iraqi Christians "crusaders and traitors," and noted that
Christianity in Iraq predated the birth of Islam. Another
panelist, the President of Mandeans in Iraq and the World,
Sattar Al-Hilo, complained that elements of Iraqi law
discriminated against minorities. Mandean creed forbids
divorce, Al-hilo related, and many Mandeans wishing to end
marriages converted to Islam to do so. Iraqi law stipulated,
however, that if a head of household converted, his whole
family was considered to have converted simultaneously.


7. (U) Archbishop Sleiman, also the president of Caritas
Iraq, called attention to the humanitarian needs of all
Iraqis. Development programs in Iraq were not comprehensive
and often did not reach the poorest citizens, he argued.
This was true under Saddam, and continued today, even in
areas that had benefited from rapid economic growth, like
Kurdistan. Most assistance projects, Sleiman added, focus on
cities rather than villages.


8. (SBU) Following the panel discussion, Sako told Embassy
Vatican polchief that he believed Christians should not
participate in the upcoming provincial elections in Iraq, to
protest the small number of seats set aside to them. Sako
thought this was the only way to apply pressure on electoral
officials and correct the situation in the future, "as the
Sunnis did in previous elections."

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Detractors Criticize High Conference Costs
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9. (SBU) Critics called the cost of the conference --
reportedly near one million euros -- "excessive." Others
accused the Archbishop of hosting the event solely to confer
on himself a degree of international gravitas. Opposition
Greek Cypriot daily "Politis" wrote, "Last year, he gave only
30,000 pounds (65,000 USD) to the victims of the
Peloponnesian fires, saying he couldn't give more because the
Church's money came from 'the honorable toil of the people.'
Then he goes and spends one million euros for supposed
religious 'leaders' and heads of countries to stay in
five-star hotels. Interfaith dialogue is not a bad thing,
but spending all this money was just showing off." To
conference supporters, however, the substantial cost of the
conference was justified. As one theologian put it, "You
need to take into account the substantial result. And
anyway, the money wasn't thrown away. It went back into the
Cypriot economy, to the hotels and buses."

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Comment
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10. (SBU) The Cyprus conference was successful in that it
gathered international political leaders and personalities,
influential members of the Roman Curia, Sant'Egidio members
engaged in various conflict-resolution initiatives, and
several thousand Sant'Egidio volunteers and sympathizers. It
also offered a unique public demonstration of joint effort
between leading Catholic and Orthodox organizations and
clerics. While the formal plenary and panels provided a wide
spectrum of views on many different topics, the greatest
value of the event lay in the opportunity to network and
develop informal contacts on the margins of meetings. The
conference was also a platform to promote Judeo-Christian

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values and showcase them to representatives of other cultures
and religions, and to educate new generations on universal
values, tolerance, and peace. Next year's conference in
Cracow coincides with the 70th anniversary of the Nazi
invasion of Poland and the 20th anniversary of the fall of
the Berlin Wall.


11. (SBU) The high-profile conference on interfaith dialogue
was also a welcome sight in divided Nicosia, given the
history of conflict between the two communities on the
island. Yet questions remain as to whether Chrysostomos was
the right person to host such an event and whether the
conference achieved anything for peace in Cyprus. Notably
absent were Turkish Cypriot political and religious leaders,
even though the Archbishop had informed the Ambassador on
October 30 that he would invite them and hoped they would
attend.
Urbancic