Obama kisses Chávez in Benetton ad campaign

Italian store Benetton launched its new ad campaign with photo montages showing the Pope kissing the imam of Cairo's al-Azhar, Ahmed el Tayeb, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez also kissing his US counterpart Barack Obama in the name of the fight “against hate.”

The controversial campaign also showed Obama kissing his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao, and another photograph in which French President Nicolas Sarkozy is doing the same thing with Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The montage was presented on Wednesday in Paris by Alessandro Benetton, the Vice-President of the store, and its called “Unhate.”

Later, Benetton withdrew the image of Pope Benedict kissing an imam on the mouth after the Vatican protested at the shock campaign.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi called the unauthorised and "manipulative" use of the pope's picture in the photo montage totally unacceptable and suggested it might take legal action against the company.

Benetton said the purpose of its campaign was "exclusively to fight the culture of hate in every form" but said it had nontheless decided to withdraw the image.

"We are sorry that the use of an image of the pontiff and the imam should have offended the sensibilities of the faithful in this way," it said in a statement.