Mideast democratisation should be homegrown, says panel

1.00pm - By HAITHAM HADDADIN

KUWAIT - The process of democratisation in the Middle East should be gradual, homegrown and not decreed from outside, analysts and politicians said at forum on the region's future held in Kuwait this weekend.

Delegates said Washington's Greater Middle East plan for reform in the Arab world contained serious omissions, and they criticised other projects described as promoting democracy.

"Giving up the attempts to impose reform and change from outside is the start of implementing the hoped-for reforms from within," Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah said at the May 15-16 meeting.

After objections from Europeans and Arabs, US President George W Bush's administration scaled down its proposals. They became a softer initiative to promote long-term democratic reforms in a region stretching from Mauritania to Pakistan.

The proposals include a "Greater Middle East Forum for the Future" to provide a regular venue for discussion of reform goals among state, business and civil society leaders.

"The lack of clear and defined conception and mechanisms of implementation for the various initiatives weakens their content and makes them just ideas being peddled," said Qatar's First Deputy Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani.

Sheikh Hamad, also Qatar's foreign minister, said the reform plans, which include various European initiatives as well as a Nato partnership-for-peace initiative, have unjustifiably linked international terrorism with the Arab and Islamic worlds.

"It's also noted there's competition and differences between the two sides of the Atlantic in this regard, which creates many problems in implementing (the initiatives)," he said.

Speaking at an economic forum in Jordan, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday the United States acknowledged reforms in the Arab world should come from within the region and pledged Washington's help to bolster the process.

Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said in Kuwait that democratic reforms would help Gulf states fighting militants claiming to act in the name of Islam. Saudi Arabia is battling a wave of what it terms al Qaeda-linked violence.

"The best way to stop that is by opening up the political system," Clawson told the panel.

Saudi political analyst Turki al-Hamad said Washington was providing a bad example through its 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Washington "is employing the policy of a stick with no carrot," he said.

Mohammad al-Saqer, who heads the foreign affairs committee of Kuwait's parliament, said genuine reform by Arab states would also require US backing for a just settlement for the Palestinian-Israeli problem for democratisation to work.

"The American position only takes Israel's interests into account and this is the sole reason behind the enmity towards US policy in the region," Saqer said.

- REUTERS