Frail Pope Visits Flock of 120 Azeri Faithful

The Pope was too frail to walk off his plane yesterday at the start of a visit to Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic with just 120 registered Roman Catholics, fewer than were on the aircraft.

Surprise at the choice of destination for his 96th foreign trip gave way to melancholy at the latest sign of his physical decline when the Pope was put in a mobile platform, lowered to the runway and wheeled along a red carpet past an honour guard and military band.

On what has been billed as a trip to promote tolerance between Islam and other faiths, John Paul, 82, spoke at the airport in the capital, Baku, making a plea for peace.

Speaking in Russian, he said: "Here at the gateway to the east, not far from where armed conflict continues to prevail, cruelly and senselessly... I ask religious leaders to reject all violence as offensive to the name of God, and to be tireless promoters of peace and harmony."

After a few minutes the Pope, whose mind is sharp but whose words are slurred by Parkinson's disease, stepped aside and an aide finished reading the speech.

Later he told members of parliament: "As long as I have breath within me, I shall cry out: Peace, in the name of God."

Vatican statistics estimate its flock of Azeris to be 120 out of a population of 7 million, most of whom are Shi'ite Muslims. The country has two Catholic priests. There is no Vatican embassy, obliging the Pope to use a hotel for the first time in his travels.

The trip is partly an effort to appease Baku after last September's papal visit to neighbouring Armenia, which won control of some Azeri territory in a war in 1994 over the ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Pope will today head to Bulgaria for a four-day trip which Sofia hopes will dispel suspicion that it was Bulgarian agents who plotted the 1981 shooting of John Paul in St Peter's square.