(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-01-11 20:59

After two days immersed in the intense and arcane world of Mideast peacemaking, Bush toured holy sites in northern Israel on Friday, listening as robed clerics read him biblical passages about Jesus' days of ministry there centuries ago.

Bush visited Capernaum, a site where Jesus is said to have performed miracles. The president gazed across the Sea of Galilee where Jesus is claimed to have walked on water. He toured the site of an ancient synagogue and joked and held hands with nuns outside the Church of the Beatitudes, a place where Jesus delivered his famed "Sermon on the Mount."

Related readings:  Bush ends first Israel, West Bank visit in footsteps of Jesus  Bush heads to Gulf States on second half of Mideast tour  Bush meets ailing Sharon's sons  Bush sees Palestine state treaty within year  Bush holds talks with Abbas in Ramallah  Bush shifts focus to West Bank  Bush visits Mideast to push for peace

Asked how it felt to walk in Jesus' footsteps, Bush replied "Amazing experience."

During the visit, Bush was given a crystal statue inscribed with words from the sermon, recounted in Matthew Chapter 5: "Blessed are those who are peacemakers for they will be called children of God."

Archbishop Elias Shakur, the Greek Catholic clergyman who showed Bush around the site, said he asked him, "Did you come as a politician, as a leader of state, or as a pilgrim?"

"I came as a pilgrim," Bush said, according to Shakur.

Earlier in the day, Bush became misty-eyed as he toured the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. The president, who first visited the memorial in 1998 when he was governor of Texas, was wearing a yarmulke as he rekindled an eternal flame and placed a red-white-and-blue wreath on a stone slab that covers ashes of Holocaust victims taken from six extermination camps.

Bush called the memorial a "sobering reminder that evil exists and a call that when we find evil we must resist it."

"I was most impressed that people in the face of horror and evil would not forsake their god. In the face of unspeakable crimes against humanity, brave souls — young and old — stood strong for what they believe," he said.

The peace effort is the centerpiece of Bush's eight-day tour, but the balance of the trip is likely to focus as much on the uncertain ambitions of Shiite Iran. Bush's Sunni allies are nervous about the rise of Iran in their midst, and the threat its adherents may one day pose to their authoritarian regimes, but also are sometimes at odds with the United States over the best strategy to address or confront Tehran.

Some Arab states are worried by a new US intelligence estimate downgrading the near-term threat that Iran will build nuclear weapons. Although Bush and other US officials have said Iran remains a threat, allies with less powerful militaries fear that the United States is taking itself out of a potential fight. Bush says he wants to solve the Iran puzzle through diplomacy but takes no options off the table.

In Kuwait, Bush was meeting Sheik Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah, emir of the wealthy nation that sits at the top of the Persian Gulf. Kuwait is flanked by large and powerful neighbors Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran to the east. While in Kuwait, Bush was getting an update on Iraq's security and political status from his top military commander there, Gen. David Petraeus and US Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker.

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