Pope trip will not heal wounds -Turkey Muslim head

ROME, Nov 15 (Reuters) Pope Benedict's trip to Turkey may help improve relations with Muslims but will not heal wounds stemming from his remarks about Islam, Turkey's religious affairs head said in an interview published today.

Ali Bardakoglu, who will meet the German-born Pope during the November. 28-December. 1 trip, also said he did not believe the Pontiff would be in any danger despite recent protests.

''No, I'm not worried,'' Bardakoglu told La Stampa newspaper.

''This trip won't resolve all of the problems but it will be a good step in the direction of dialogue.

''Peace is destroyed in a second but it takes a lot of time, a long process, to build it.'' The Pope has repeatedly expressed regret for the reaction to a September. 12 speech in which he quoted 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who spoke of the Prophet Mohammad's ''command to spread by the sword the faith he preached''. But he has stopped short of the unequivocal apology.

Bardakoglu, who has accepted the Pope's expressions of regret, again called the Pope's comments ''unacceptable.'' ''It doesn't matter if who is saying something unacceptable about Islam is a lay person, a religious person or an important person: It's important to correct it,'' he said.

''But these are things of the past. We're looking ahead.'' The Pope's lecture sparked a violent reaction in many Muslim countries and some Turkish activists called for the trip to be cancelled. On November. 2 a man was arrested for firing a weapon in front of the Italian consulate in Istanbul in protest against the Pope's visit.

The Pope said he had been trying to ''explain that religion and violence do not go together but religion and reason do.'' Bardakoglu rejected that argument, saying it leads to an ''academic misinterpretation''.

''Islamic faith does not exclude rationalism. In the Koran, there are signs that logic is not foreign to God,'' he said.

The controversy has threatened to overshadow a trip which was meant to focus on a discussion on Christian unity between the Pope and the spiritual head of the world's Orthodox Christians, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, on November. 29.

Unusual for such a high-level visit, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan will not greet the Pope. Erdogan's office has said he will be at a NATO summit in Latvia for the first two days of the Pope's trip, and busy with other meetings in Turkey after that.

REUTERS PB PM1548