Pope sending special envoy to make plea for peace in Iraq

? Pope John Paul II will send a special envoy to Iraq to emphasize his appeal for peace and to encourage Iraqi authorities to cooperate with the United Nations, the Vatican announced Sunday.

Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, emeritus president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, will today leave Rome for Baghdad, accompanied by a counselor, Monsignor Franco Coppola.

Their mission is to “show to all the plea of the Holy Father in favor of peace and to help the Iraqi authorities make a serious reflection on the need for effective international cooperation, based on justice and international rights, with the aim of assuring this population of the supreme good of peace,” papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said in a statement.

The Vatican has been outspoken in its opposition to a new Iraq conflict, with top clerics saying a preventive strike would have no legal or moral justification. The pontiff himself has previously said war against Iraq would be a “defeat for humanity.”

Etchegaray, 80, has previously served as the pope’s envoy to trouble spots, most recently to Israel and the Palestinian territories, where he tried to help end the standoff last year between Israeli forces and Palestinian gunmen holed up in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity.

The pope plans to meet with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz on Friday — the day U.N. weapons inspectors are to deliver progress reports to the U.N. Security Council.