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Arabs unable to make reforms on their own: Qatar
Arab countries are not ready to carry out reforms from within and may be better off taking a closer look at a US plan to spread democracy in the region, Qatar’s foreign minister said. “The Arab world is not ready to launch its own (reform) initiative due to diverging interests,” said Foreign Minister Hamed bin Jassem bin Jabr al-Thani in reports published in local newspapers on Tuesday. Thani, who spoke Monday night during a cultural festival in Doha, defended a US plan to unveil a “Greater Middle East” initiative to promote democracy in Arab and Muslim states during the Group of Eight summit of developed nations in June. He called on Arabs to “study the contents and to rationally examine the ideas and objectives” of the US plan. Thani proposed a “strategic partnership between countries of the region and world powers,” based on the US plan to “promote democracy in the world.”

Kuwait said on Tuesday it backed political reform in the Middle East but any changes should be homegrown, in an apparent rebuff to Washington’s “Greater Middle East Initiative”. The initiative calls for internal reforms by Middle Eastern states, where Washington says lack of democracy has fostered Islamic militancy. It has been dismissed by Arab states for failing to mention the Arab-Israeli conflict, which they say is at the heart of the region’s problems. “We believe reforms are necessary and that these reforms should stem from the people and from within the regimes, but they cannot be imposed from outside,” Kuwaiti PM told reporters at parliament.
The homegrown variety will take better, but first you have to grow some. The sticker's freedom of religion, of course. If you leave people to make their own decisions there's no telling what they're going to decide. Devout Muslims, with turbans and automatic weapons, could find themselves living next door to Lutherans or something.

Posted by: Fred 2004-03-17
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=28345