The issue, which resulted in sharp Christian opposition in the past, has again come to the fore with the recent start of construction in an area originally planned by the municipality as a plaza for pilgrims. It was one of the issues raised by US President George W. Bush in his recent talks with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, apparently following a telephone call from Pope John Paul II to Bush.

Yesterday, figures such as Rev. Ray Lockhart, chairman of the largely evangelical United Christian Council in Israel, and Rev. Charles Kopp, of the Jerusalem Baptist Congregation, joined with Father Abdel Messih and Father Michele Piccirillo, both Franciscans, at a press conference at the Vatican's Notre Dame Center in Jerusalem.

The coalition opposing the mosque ranges from Christian Zionists to Arab bishops, said David Pileggi, of Christchurch in the Old City of Jerusalem.

"That shows the level of our concern," he said.

Kopp said that a week ago, those opposing the mosque, who are united in a group called the International Coalition for Nazareth, sent a letter to Sharon. The next day, he added, the police stopped work at the site. He noted that the letter had called for the transfer of land to the Moslem group building the mosque be rescinded, the land to be zoned as open public property, the planning authorities not to issue a permit, and that archeological remains at the site be respected.

Kopp said that moderate Moslems in Nazareth had proposed building a mosque elsewhere.

On Sunday, the group plans to hold a protest outside Sharon's office.

Lockhart said that the Christians of this country are continually being "squeezed." There are constant Moslem incursions at Christian holy sites. The basilica in Nazareth is the largest Christian church in the Middle East, he pointed out.

"There is little to celebrate at Christian holy sites this Christmas," Lockhart said.

Piccirillo, an archeologist, said that the work at the site had begun without any archeological survey or supervision. Already, he said, there are eyewitness reports that three pieces of columns and some bones had been found, but when he wrote to the Antiquities Authority, he was told that no remains had been uncovered. There is evidence, he added, of a Jewish tomb from the Roman period in the area.

Prof. Rafi Yisraeli, of Hebrew University, author of Green Crescent over Nazareth, which is to appear shortly, said permission to build the mosque had come about as a result of promises by representatives of both former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and former prime minister Ehud Barak, who were vying for the Arab Moslem vote. Even Shas brought former Sephardi chief rabbi Ovadia Yosef to Arab villages in an effort to show that it has much in common with the Moslem fundamentalists, he said.