Demonstrators clashed with police in central Rome on Saturday as US President George W. Bush wound up a visit to Pope Benedict and Italian leaders.

 

Hours after Bush had discussed Middle East peace with Pope Benedict and was wrapping up meetings with Italian politicians, police in riot gear charged and fired tear gas at demonstrators who had thrown bottles at them in Rome's historic center.

 

The protestors, some wearing motorcycle helmets and bandanas to cover their faces, shattered the window of a bank and overturned outdoor dining tables on some of Rome's most famous streets.

 

Several policemen and demonstrators were injured.

 

Tear gas wafted into Rome's historic Piazza Navona, which had been the scene of a demonstration that was for the most part peaceful. Anti-American graffiti was spray-painted on some statues and restaurants and shopkeepers lowered their shutters.

 

The incident was far from where Bush was staying at the US ambassador's residence in another quarter of the city and on the other side of the Tiber River from the Vatican.

 

About 12,000 demonstrators, most of them peaceful, staged protests against the US-led war in Iraq and the expansion of a US military base in Italy.

 

The highlight of Bush's day on Saturday was his first-ever meeting with Benedict, a fellow religious conservative, in the Vatican.

 

Bush later said he felt "awe" in the presence of the Pope, who urged him to seek "regional and negotiated" solutions to Middle East conflicts like Iraq.

 

Addressing the 80-year-old Roman Catholic leader as "sir" instead of the usual honorific "Your Holiness," Bush heard the Pope's concerns about the Middle East and the plight of Christians in Iraq.

 

Bush told him of his government's efforts to combat AIDS and malaria in Africa and hunger and poverty.

 

He told the Pope in front of reporters about what he called "the very strong AIDS initiative" at the Group of Eight summit this week, which pledged US$60 billion to fight diseases ravaging Africa - although much of that was made up of existing pledges.

 

A Vatican statement said Benedict and Bush had discussed the Middle East and the Holy See's "hope for a regional and negotiated solution to the conflicts that afflict that region."

 

Following his meeting with the Pope, Bush arrived in Albania yesterday, the first visit by a US leader to the Balkan state which had prepared the kind of welcome he could only dream of in many countries.

 

Bush said yesterday the United Nations should grant independence quickly to the breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo, and if Russia continued to block it the West would act.

 

"At some point in time, sooner rather than later, you've got to say enough is enough, Kosovo is independent," he told a news conference.

 

Bush said he was "worried about expectations not being met" in Kosovo, where 90 percent of the population are ethnic Albanians demanding independence from Serbia and where NATO leads a peacekeeping force of 17,000 troops.

 

He said Washington would continue to seek a solution through the United Nations but "if it is apparent that (an agreement) is not going to happen in a relatively quick period of time, in my judgment, we need to put forward the resolution. Hence, deadline," Bush said.

 

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe later stressed: "We're working inside the UN Security Council and that includes Russia."

 

(China Daily June 11, 2007)