LE VATICAN CONDAMNE BUSH

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - A senior American cardinal in the Vatican (news - web sites) has accused the U.S. administration of "moral failure" and deception in Iraq (news - web sites) and warned the war had severely compromised future relations with the Arab world.

In an interview due to be published in the June edition of "Inside the Vatican" magazine, Cardinal James Francis Stafford also said the abuse of Iraqi prisoners was the work of "barbarians." An advance copy was made available to Reuters.

Stafford, the former archbishop of Denver who has been working in the Vatican since 1996, said the reasons for starting the war in Iraq were a "moral failure" because there had been no conclusive proof of weapons of mass destruction.

"Why did the president, the vice-president and the secretary of defense say there was an immediate danger to the peace of American society by the proximate use of weapons that would come from Iraq, either directly or through al Qaeda?" he said.

"Why did they say that when they didn't have direct evidence?" Stafford said. Stafford, who is close to Pope John Paul (news - web sites), said he feared the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by the U.S. military would have long-term consequences on relations with Arabs and Muslims.

"Muslims are outraged and truly deceived because we are imposing the same type of life upon Iraqi society that we said we were going to rescue them from. It's the very opposite of what we said we were going to do," he said.

"Not only have we humiliated the Iraqi people, but we've deceived them. We've deceived the Arab peoples," he said.

"Is this what American democracy is producing? Men and women who, just below the surface, are barbarians ... Is that what we're producing?" he said.

The pope strongly opposed the war and dispatched envoys to both President Bush (news - web sites) and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) to try to avert the conflict.

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