The Times
From Richard Owen in Baku

The Pope embarked on his 96th foreign journey yesterday, having to be hoisted on and off his aircraft with a hydraulic lift.

Grimacing with pain, in a chilly wind, the Pope, 82, used a mobile platform to travel the few yards to his car at Baku airport at the start of his five-day trip to Azerbaijan and Bulgaria.

Speaking in Russian and Azeri, he read only the opening segment of his arrival speech, which was finished for him by an interpreter. Later he slurred his words and at times struggled to stay awake during speeches in his honour by President Aliyev.

There are said to be only 120 practising Roman Catholics in the whole of Azerbaijan, but, as with the Pope’s trips to Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Armenia last year, this visit is intended to strengthen links with the Muslim world and the Orthodox Church in the twilight of his papacy.

With an eye on Afghanistan and Chechnya, as well as the Middle East, the Pope condemned the “unspeakable suffering inflicted on defenceless peoples” by Islamic fundamentalism and by “imperialism”, an apparent reference to America and Russia.

“Enough of wars in the name of God!” he said, adding that he would fight for peace “for as long as I have breath within me” — a remark apparently intended to answer recent suggestions that he might resign over ill health.

Later, the Pope, who has had Parkinson’s disease for ten years, retired, with obvious relief, to the Baku hotel that was serving as his headquarters after being given temporary diplomatic status as Vatican territory by the Azerbaijani authorities.

Vatican officials said that the Pope had been obliged to stay in a hotel for the first time in 23 years because there was no Vatican embassy or other Catholic institution in Azerbaijan.

To the surprise of many, including the manager, Ilgar Nuri, the Vatican chose the small, three-star Irshad Hotel rather than one of the five-star chain hotels that have sprung up in post-Communist Baku thanks to Western investment in the local oil industry.

Mr Nuri said that he had given the Pope a room with a view of the Caspian — “my best”. Asked why the Pope had chosen his hotel Mr Nuri suggested that it was because Irshad meant “spiritual guide” in Azeri.

The Pope will visit Bulgaria today, laying to rest controversy over an attempt to kill him 21 years ago. The Communist regime was long suspected of organising the attack on behalf of the KGB. The 1981 assassination attempt was carried out by a Turkish gunman in the Vatican but is widely believed to have been inspired by the Soviet Union in a failed attempt to prevent the Polish-born Pope from using his moral authority to defeat Communism.

President Parvanov of Bulgaria said yesterday that he had been assured that the Pope, the first to visit predominantly Orthodox Bulgaria, no longer believed that Sofia had been involved in the plot to kill him. “Bulgaria is innocent,” the President told Corriere della Sera. “As head of state I declare that there is no evidence whatever of our complicity, none.”

L’Avvenire, the Catholic daily, said that former aides to the late Bulgarian Communist dictator Todor Zhivkov had hinted that Sofia had played a role in the 1981 assassination attempt, remarking when Communism collapsed that “it was a pity we missed”.

The Pope’s doctors blame the murder attempt, in which he was shot in the abdomen, for contributing to his long decline, but Vatican officials said that he wanted to put the past behind him.

His “real destination”, according to the Pope’s entourage, remains Moscow, one of the “final goals” of his papacy, where he hopes to overcome the hostility of the Russian Orthodox Church toward the Vatican and set the seal on the emergence of “a new Russia” after the collapse of Communism.