JERUSALEM, 9 April 2005 — Even in death, Pope John Paul II managed to bring together the bitterest of foes, with the Israeli president meeting his Syrian and Iranian counterparts for the first time at the pontiff’s funeral yesterday.
During the requiem mass in St. Peter’s Square, Israeli President Moshe Katzav shook the hand of Syria’s Bashar Assad and exchanged a few words in Persian with Iran’s Mohammad Khatami, media reported.
Shortly afterward, the Syrian leader, who was sitting behind his Israeli counterpart in the dignitaries’ section, took the initiative to shake Katsav’s hand a second time, the reports said.
The official Syrian news agency SANA later said Katzav and Bashar had shaken hands but that it had “no political significance and does not alter the known Syrian position” toward the Jewish state.
It said Katzav “turned around to President Bashar who was in the area reserved for dignitaries and held out his hand, without exchanging words. Good manners require that those attending the funeral should shake hands.”
The unprecedented meeting took place in the wake of an emotional funeral for the late pope, which was attended by scores the political and religious leaders from around the world.
During the brief exchange between Khatami and Katsav, the two leaders discussed the Iranian town of Yazd where they were both born.
“The simple fact of having contact, even if they don’t lead to positive results, has great importance,” said Katsav, who attended the funeral as part of an Israeli delegation also including Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom.
“It’s a first,” exclaimed government spokesman Avi Pazner, a former ambassador to Rome.
“These are important, human gestures that I hope will be followed up concretely,” he said, admitting he was “happy” about the exchange of greetings.
In a later interview with mass-circulation daily Yediot Aharanot, Katzav warned against reading too much into gestures. “When heads of state meet, they always shake hands,” he told the paper’s online edition. “I don’t think we can really say the ice has been broken. We shouldn’t attach too much importance to such politeness.”
But however brief, the gestures marked an historic precedent in Israel’s bitter relations with Iran and its Arab ally, Syria.
In Tehran, Iran’s former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani paid homage to John Paul II during Friday prayers and urged the Vatican to recall the pontiff’s ideal of Christianity which, he said, was being betrayed by the United States.
“His actions in favor of peace, his opposition to war — in particularly the war in Iraq — the denunciation of American crimes at Abu Ghraib prison conferred on John Paul II a greater international stature than that of his predecessors,” said Rafsanjani, one of Iran’s most influential personalities.
Khatami took a similar line in an interview with Italian daily Corriere della Sera. “For me, it is very important to pay a full tribute to a John Paul II. He was a man of spirituality, ethics, justice. I hope that the road he paved will be pursued in the future,” said Khatami.
