Around the World

Pope pays homage to Holocaust victims

JERUSALEM - Pope John Paul II, who witnessed the Holocaust as a young seminary student in his native Poland, paid personal homage to the millions of Jews murdered by the Nazis yesterday, telling an audience including death camp survivors that the lasting memory of the Jewish people's agony must "ensure that never again will evil prevail."

Speaking in the shadowy gloom of the Hall of Remembrance at Yad Vashem, Israel's main Holocaust memorial, he expressed sadness at "hatred, acts of persecution and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews by Christians at any time and in any place.''

While the pontiff stopped short of an outright apology on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church for what many Jews consider the Vatican's silence, inaction and complicity in the Holocaust, he added: "In this place of solemn remembrance, I fervently pray that our sorrow for the tragedy which the Jewish people suffered in the 20th century will lead to a new relationship between Christians and Jews."

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, whose maternal grandparents were killed in the Nazi death camp at Treblinka, in Poland, hailed the pope at the ceremony for what he called his "noble act" of reaching out to the Jews.

Indonesian president to be interrogated

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Former Indonesian President Suharto is healthy enough to be questioned by prosecutors who are investigating whether he and his family stole billions of dollars from the government during his 32-year rule, the country's attorney general said yesterday.

Suharto's lawyers have insisted that the 78-year-old former dictator, who was hospitalized twice last year after suffering a stroke, is too sick to be interrogated.