LONDON, England (AFP) – Christians in the Middle East are being put at risk by the “short-sighted” and “ignorant” policy on Iraq of Britain and its allies, the leader of the world’s Anglicans said yesterday.

Doctor Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, warned that Christians could be chased out of the region due to the hostility created by the invasion of Iraq, in an article for The Times newspaper.

The Church of England leader accused coalition countries of endangering the lives and futures of thousands of Christians in the Middle East, who were now being viewed by their countrymen as “supporters of the crusading West”.

He said that despite concerns being voiced in the build-up to the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, there was plainly no strategy for handling the risk that Middle Eastern Christians would be put under.

“The results are now painfully adding to what was already a difficult situation for Christian communities across the region,” Williams wrote in what The Times called an extraordinary attack.

The knock-on effect “simply illustrates that we, from the government downwards, are seriously badly informed about Middle Eastern Christians.

“These communities will survive only if fellow Christians in the West decide to pay a bit of attention.

“It’s not that these Christians are being persecuted by Muslim governments on the whole. It’s a matter of rising tides of extremism, which governments are as keen to check as anyone.”

He said “clumsy” political or military pressure to protect them would only backfire, adding that backing Christians would be good for Muslims too.

“It’s a reminder of the healthier and saner relationship between the faiths that existed in many parts of the Middle East for long tracts of its complicated history,” the archbishop wrote.

Alongside other British Christian leaders, Williams is in Bethlehem in the West Bank, the birthplace of Jesus, in the run-up to Christmas.

He said that the Christian population of Bethlehem was down to a quarter.

“There are some disturbing signs of Muslim anti-Christian feeling, despite the consistent traditions of coexistence,” Williams said.

“But their plight is made still more intolerable by the tragic conditions created by the ‘security fence’ that almost chokes the shrinking town. The sense of desperate isolation is felt by Christians more acutely than most.”

He said Christians had plenty to offer in the search for peace in the region.

However, “to the zealots on one side they are potential terrorists, to the zealots on the other they may be seen as infidels. And unfortunately it’s the zealots who make the running.

“The first Christian believers were Middle Easterners. It’s a sobering thought that we might live to see the last native Christian believers in the region.

“This Christmas, pray for the little town of Bethlehem, and spare a thought for those who have been put at risk by our short-sightedness and ignorance,” he urged.