THE Vatican is rolling out the red carpet for Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, as part of a last-ditch attempt by the Pope to avert an “unjustified war”.

The newspaper Corriere della Sera said that Mr Aziz would be “treated like a media star” when he arrives today for a five-day visit to Rome and Assisi. He will be staying in a luxury hotel on the Via Veneto with his own staff and bodyguards.

The Vatican is hoping to engineer a meeting between Mr Aziz and Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, who arrives in Rome on Monday. However, the visit of Mr Aziz, a Chaldean Christian, is causing political embarrassment in Italy, whose Centre Right Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has sided with the United States by offering bases, airspace and moral support.

Pierferdinando Casini, the Speaker of Parliament, said yesterday that he would refuse to meet Mr Aziz because this would give legitimacy to the Baghdad regime. It is not clear if Mr Aziz will meet Signor Berlusconi but he is likely to be received by Franco Frattini, the Italian Foreign Minister.

Avvenire, the Italian Catholic daily, said that there was a “long list” of Italian and Vatican figures “lining up to shake Tariq Aziz’s hand” despite claims by human rights organisations that his hands were “stained with crimes against humanity”.

Diplomats said that Mr Aziz might also meet unnamed “European politicians linked to the Franco-German plan for disarming Iraq without recourse to war”. The highlight of Mr Aziz’s trip will be his audience with the Pope in the Vatican tomorrow, when he is expected to invite the pontiff to Baghdad. Although some conservative Catholics have sought to persuade the Pope that conflict with Iraq is a just war, many Catholic bishops and dioceses have echoed the Pope’s assertion that war is always a defeat for humanity.

The Pope who opposed the 1991 Gulf War, regards Iraq as the cradle of Christianity because it contains the birthplace of Abraham at Ur of the Chaldees. His personal envoy is on a peace mission in Baghdad and likely to meet President Saddam Hussein today.

Avvenire said that Mr Aziz’s visit would be one long round of ceremonies, receptions and dinners. He is to visit the Italian Parliament and then meet “stars from the world of Italian culture” at a dinner in his honour. He is to appear on a television chat show tonight and at the Foreign Press Club tomorrow.

Mr Aziz travels to Assisi at the weekend, a visit apparently timed to ensure that he is not in Rome for Saturday’s anti-war march, expected to attract a million protesters.

Father Vincenzo Coli, custodian of the Basilica of St Francis, said that there was intolerable hostility towards Mr Aziz. The Franciscan friars, he said, “hold out the hand of peace to everybody”.

“We don’t ask people to account for themselves. Ex-terrorists have come here to pray to St Francis, and industrialists accused of corruption. They all come to find themselves.” He said that Mr Aziz would light a lamp of peace at Assisi and pray at the tomb of St Francis.

He would also handle one of the Basilica’s greatest treasures, a small ivory horn given to St Francis by Sultan Kamil of Egypt in 1219 when the saint was in the Middle East seeking to halt the Crusades, which he regarded as hypocritical and bloodthirsty and driven by Western economic, rather than religious, interests. The horn was used by St Francis to summon the faithful to prayer.

The visit was organised by Father Jean-Marie Benjamin, a French priest in Rome who has often visited Baghdad.

However, Charles Forrest, of the British human rights organisation Indict, who is in Rome, said that Mr Aziz deserved a Nuremberg-style trial.

“This is his first visit to Europe for five years and a chance to arrest him,” Mr Forrest said. “He is implicated in a long list of crimes against humanity including the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the maltreatment of hostages during the 1991 Gulf War, the torture and murder of thousands of opponents of the regime and genocide against the Kurds.

“He is as barbaric as Saddam Hussein himself. It is scandalous that he can travel freely and be received by the Pope and the Italian authorities.”

There are almost a million Christians in Iraq, 70 per cent of them Chaldeans, in a predominantly Muslim population of 23 million. According to Raphael Bidawid, Patriarch of Babylonia of the Chaldees, Iraqi Christians enjoy the protection of Saddam Husain.

The Chaldeans are descended from the Nestorians, named after Nestorius, a 5th century monk from Antioch who was condemned for heresy for claiming that the Incarnate Christ was not God and man simultaneously but separate persons, one human and one divine.

The Nestorian Church survived, with its headquarters in Baghdad from the 8th century. It was later reconciled with Rome and is in communion with the Pope.

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