Cairo - Opponents of the Iraqi President, Mr Saddam Hussein, yesterday appealed to Pope John Paul to cancel plans to visit Iraq as long as it remains under "dictatorship".
"It is our wish that your Holiness will not visit Iraq while it is under the rule of a despot with the blood of the innocent . . . on his hands," they said in a letter to the Pope.
The Pope said in a document in June that to celebrate the new millennium he wanted to visit Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Greece and Holy Land sites ruled by Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
