Reason unclear as Carter out of pope delegation
WASHINGTON -- President Bush arrived in Rome last night for Pope John Paul II's funeral, bringing with him a delegation of US dignitaries -- as well as a public-relations headache over a botched invitation to former President Jimmy Carter.
Bush will appear at the pontiff's funeral tomorrow with former Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. But Carter, the first president to invite a pope to the White House, will not be there.
Neither the White House nor the former president's staff in Georgia can agree on exactly why Carter -- who made history with a reception for Pope John Paul II at the White House in 1979 -- won't be attending. The White House says Carter refused its invitation. Carter allies explain his absence as the result of either a miscommunication or a White House snub.
''I'm very disappointed he isn't going," said Mary Hoyt, Rosalynn Carter's former press secretary, recalling the Carters' warmth for the pope. ''I think he belongs there."
A statement from Carter's office earlier this week said the former president had asked the White House whether he could join the US delegation at the funeral but was told that space was limited and other US dignitaries were eager to attend.
The White House said that it had extended an invitation and noted that the Vatican, not the White House, limited the US delegation to five people. Laura Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice round out the US delegation.
Carter tried to end the flap in a statement yesterday: ''There has been no dissension between me and the White House concerning the pope's funeral," he said.
But some see Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and an outspoken opponent of the Iraq war, as deliberately excluded.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan rejected claims that Carter had been rebuffed.
Gerald Ford is the only other living former president not attending the funeral. The 91-year-old's health is fragile, and his doctors have told him to limit his travel. 