Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 6  Num. 84
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                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")

Thanks to a CN reader for sending me the following.

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The Electronic Telegraph Friday 15 December 1995

[World News]

Pope is our friend, says Rabin's widow

BY BRUCE JOHNSTON IN ROME

LEAH RABIN, the widow of Yitzhak Rabin, and her children, Dalia and Yuval, met the Pope for a half-hour private audience at the Vatican yesterday in what she described as a strictly "personal visit".

The meeting came on the second day of a trip to Rome, after a visit to the Sistine Chapel.

Mrs Rabin told the Pope: "I would be so very pleased to see you in Jerusalem. We consider you a friend." He replied that he had already accepted such an invitation from her late husband in March last year, several months after the Vatican and Israel agreed to recognise each other.

But the right time and way had still to be found to make such a trip possible.

An aide of Mrs Rabin who was present said the Pope then referred to Jerusalem as "the political capital of Israel", something the Vatican has never officially recognised.

Joaquin Navarro Valls, the Vatican spokesman, played down the remark, saying the Pope had wanted only to emphasise the importance of the city's political dimension as well as its religious one.

Mr Navarro Valls described the meeting as "intimate, cordial and religious", in which the Pope said of the Israeli leader's assassination last month: "I know how great this terrible tragedy is. But what you inherit from him will help you to overcome it."

Mrs Rabin said on Italian television that the Pope had been "warm and informal".

The Pope, she said, "underlined that he felt that my husband had died like a martyr, as a victim of that which he believed in most, namely the right to peace."

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