VATICAN CITY, Nov 11 (AFP) - Since their historic first handshake in 1982, Yasser Arafat had a precious ally in Pope John Paul II who has always championed the "natural right" of the Palestinian people to a state.
He found a willing ear at the Vatican from the first pope in history to cross the threshold of a mosque and enter a synagogue.
While the pontiff has strived to maintain a delicate balance in his pronouncements on the Middle East, he has never been afraid of upsetting the Israelis by welcoming Arafat, whom Israel saw as a terrorist.
The welcome mat at the Vatican was rolled out for Arafat 11 times, while Arafat also met John Paul II during a papal visit to the Holy Land in 2000.
Their first meeting was in September 1982, when the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) leader was neither a Nobel Peace Prize laureate nor a president. Things were hotting up in the Middle East. Israel had invaded Lebanon a few months before, and Arafat needed a high-profile ally.
At the time, then Italian prime minister Giovanni Spadolini refused to greet Arafat, but the pope "had no difficulty at all", recalled another former prime minister Giulio Andreotti last week, when the Palestinian leader was on his death bed in Paris.
Arafat, who cannily announced to the pope that he was the second Palestinian leader to enter the Vatican -- after Saint Peter -- remembered the papal welcome as particularly warm.
"They told me I only had five minutes. After seven minutes, a cardinal came in to say that the time was up, but the pope asked him to leave. Our meeting lasted nearly an hour," the Palestinian leader recalled later.
The Holy See followed up that meeting with a statement underlining the "right of the Palestinian people to a state and the right of Israel to security".
In Israel, then prime minister Menachem Begin railed against Arafat's high-profile meeting with the head of the Roman Catholic Church, saying his hands had been "stained with the blood of innocent Jewish children".
Almost two decades later, the pontiff visited Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank during his visit to the Holy Land in March 2000.
"The Holy See has always recognized the natural right of the Palestinian people to a state, as well as its right to live in peace and tranquility with other people in the region," John Paul II said during his visit.
The last of their encounters at the Vatican took place in October 2001, after Arafat had asked to see the pope to advise him of "the worrying situation" in the Palestinian Occupied territories.
In 2003, the pontiff upset Israel with a strong condemnation of its West Bank security barrier, saying what the Middle East needed was bridges, not walls.
Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls summed up Arafat's contribution to Middle East peace on Thursday, saying he was "a leader of great charisma who loved his people and tried to guide them towards national independence".
11/11/2004 16:46 GMT - AFP