Khatami, the first Iranian leader to visit western Europe since the 1979 Islamic revolution, arrived in Italy on Tuesday for a three-day trip. Security has been heightened during his visit, with several highways closed to traffic, a massive deployment of police and helicopters constantly patrolling overhead.

In Teheran, a high-tech electronic portrait of Khatami was stolen from a busy square after the city government received anonymous threats from outraged callers. The Teheran municipality received a series of ``rude and threatening phone calls'' about the eight square-meterelectronic Khatami, which also displayed the date and time in northern Teheran's congested Qods Square.

But after authorities declined to take action, thieves took the President into their own hands and made off with the sign, the Khordad reported. It said the sign was worth some $12,500. Khatami takes his revolution of openness to the Vatican on Thursday, stepping from one divinely inspired state to another as he holds a historic meeting with Pope John Paul II. The visit will also make him Iran's most senior religious leader to visit the Pope.

Since his election in 1997, Khatami, a moderate Shiite Muslim cleric and scholar of Western philosophy, has often called for a ``dialogue of civilisations''. Iran's tiny Roman Catholic community of 13,000 would fit into a Vatican hall and conditions for the minority have improved significantly since the 1979 revolution, when most church institutions were nationalised, according to Fides, the news agency of the Vatican's missionary arm.