An historic visit by the imam of Rome's mosque, Ala Eldin Mohammed Ismail al-Ghobashy, to the Rome synagogue tomorrow has been called off at the last moment on instructions from Muslim authorities in Cairo.

Abdullah Redouane, secretary of the Rome Islamic Cultural Centre, who was to have accompanied the imam, claimed the cancellation was for "organisational reasons". However Italian reports quoted Abdul Fattah Allam, spokesman for Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, head of Al Azhar University in Cairo, as saying the sheikh had ordered the imam not to meet Rome's Jews while Israel continued to "refuse to restore the rights" of Palestinians. Reports said the Israeli blockade of Gaza had been "the final blow".

Corriere della Sera said the cancellation of what would have been the first ever visit to Rome's synagogue by a senior Muslim cleric was proof that "even so called Muslim moderates share the ideology of hate, violence and death towards the Jewish state". It said Al Azhar, which in the absence of a central Muslim authority constituted a "Vatican of Sunni Islam", had in effect issued "a kind of fatwah."

The paper said that "What the Cairo statement really means is that Muslim dialogue with Jews in Italy is only possible once Israel has been eliminated". The synagogue visit was planned two years ago when a Jewish delegation headed by Riccardo Di Segni, Rome's Chief Rabbi, visited the Rome mosque.

Rabbi Di Segni said he had not been officially notifed of the reason for the imam's cancellation and therefore could not comment. However he told Il Messaggero, the Rome daily, that while he detested Islamophobia as much anti Semitism, the Muslim world was "having to confront in a single generation problems of intolerance, identity and integration which the Jews have been confronting for two thousand years".

Souad Sbai, head of the association of Moroccan women in Italy, said the cancellation was "short sighted and a grave mistake".