VATICAN CITY, March 26, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The United States-led wars on Iraq and Afghanistan should not be viewed as crusades launched by Christian countries against Muslims, and "Western" is not synonymous to "Christian," the head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Interfaith Dialogue said on Sunday, March 26.

"This is a very damaging confusion," Cardinal Paul Poupard, also the Vatican's Culture Minister since 1988, told Reuters.

"Pope Benedict XVI, like his predecessor John Paul II, never ceases to say this and show it by his acts, such as opposition to armed intervention in Iraq," he said.

He said that the church is not "western."

"It is catholic," he stressed, using the term derived from the Greek word for "universal."

Late Pope John Paul II led a tireless diplomatic campaign in a vain bid to head off the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

He sent personal envoys to US President George W. Bush in Washington and to ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.

His anti-Iraq war position gave momentum to the anti-war drive around the globe.

He warned Bush that American occupation forces in Iraq were damaging efforts to bring religions together.

Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Sheikh Mohamed Sayyed Tantawi has objected to the description of the US military aggression on Iraq as new "Crusade."

But former commander-in-chief of the US Central Command Gen. Anthony Zinni has said that the "aggressive" US intervention in Iraq and the Middle East prompted the people in the region to view the US as "modern crusaders" and "modern colonial power."

Poupard, 75, has also turned a spotlight on the role that culture can play in fostering understanding between Muslims and Christians.

"Culture plays a fundamental role for relations between Christians and Muslims," he told Reuters.

"Benedict XVI clearly told me we had to develop the dialogue of men of culture with representatives of non-Christian religions," the French cardinal said.

He recalled that the Pope told Muslim leaders in Germany last August that Christian-Muslim dialogue was "a vital necessity on which in large measure our future depends".

A leading theologian before becoming Pope last April, Benedict has long thought contact with non-Christians should not focus only on religion, where agreement can be difficult if not impossible, Reuters said.

Culture -- not just art but the sum of a society's values, thoughts and behaviors -- provides a rich field for people of different backgrounds to learn to understand each other.

Pope Benedict XVI said earlier this month that Muslims, Christians and Jews must collaborate to teach respect for religions and their symbols in view of the Danish cartoons that lampooned Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him).