By THOMAS WAGNER
Associated Press Writer
LONDON (AP) - The Iraq war has endangered the lives of Christians across the Middle East, the Archbishop of Canterbury said in a commentary published Saturday that criticized the U.S.-led coalition.
The failure to develop a strategy to prevent Christians from being seen as ``supporters of the crusading West'' worsened the difficult situation they already faced in the Middle East, Rowan Williams, the Anglican spiritual leader, wrote in a commentary in The London Times.
The British government rejected that assessment, instead blaming extremists in countries such as Iraq who indiscriminately attack moderate Muslims and Christians in an effort to impose their way of life on everyone.
``We disagree with his views. We don't think that it is our policies in Iraq that cause suffering of Christians,'' the Foreign Office said in a statement.
Williams, on a four-day pilgrimage to the Holy Land before Christmas with other British church leaders, said another source of the problem was the Israeli-built wall around the traditional site of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem.
After six years of Israel-Palestinian fighting, the town is now walled in by Israel's West Bank separation barrier. Poverty is deepening and Christians are leaving in droves. Israel says the wall is meant to stop Palestinian suicide bombers, but Palestinians see it as land grab.
``There are some disturbing signs of Muslim anti-Christian feeling, despite the consistent traditions of coexistence,'' Williams wrote of Bethlehem. ``But their plight is made still more intolerable by the tragic conditions created by the 'security fence' that almost chokes the shrinking town.''
The first Christian believers, Williams wrote, were Middle Easterners, and ``it's a sobering thought that we might live to see the last native Christian believers in the region.''
The troubles Christians face and their resulting migration to other countries fuels the myth in the East and West that ``Islam can't live with other faiths and that the East-West collision is an irreconcilable clash of faith and cultures,'' Williams wrote.
The Anglican leader said it was imperative to directly confront the problem that Christians face in the Middle East and to reach out to moderate Muslims.
``We need to confront it, not by weighing in with firepower, but by making real relationships with the communities there and working at trustful contacts with those Muslims who understand their own history and want to live in a lively, varied culture.''
Williams was scheduled to return to Britain on Saturday.
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