|TOP|British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrived in Italy at the weekend for a week-long holiday and meeting with the pope.

Blair and Pope Benedict XVI are expected to talk on troop withdrawals from Iraq with the new centre-left Government of Romano Prodi, and discuss the reconciliation of the Christian and Muslim religions in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001.

In addition Blair will offer a formal invitation to the pope to visit Great Britain, who has already been invited by Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster.

If the pope accepts, it would be his first official visit to England, The Times of London reported.

The two will meet next weekend, marking Blair's first official meeting with Benedict XVI.

|AD|Benedict's tour of England, if it happens, would likely last two or three days, the newspaper said.

In other news, the pope entered the Auschwitz death camp yesterday where he mourned for the lives of 1.5 million.

Walking alone beneath the camp's gate, the pope unwillingly enrolled in the Hitler youth and later drafted into the Wehrmacht, declared it was almost impossible to speak in "this valley of darkness".

He said: "In a place like this, words fail. In the end there can only be a dread silence, which is a heartfelt cry to God. Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?"

Gazing down the rail tracks that brought victims in cattle cars to their death, he said: "I had to come. It is the due of all who suffered."