Democratic Nations to Form Own Group

Representatives of 130 democracies plan to meet in Warsaw next June to create an organization limited to countries that elect their governments and allow effective opposition movements, the United States and Poland announced Monday.

U.S. officials conceded that there were some close calls in separating democratic regimes from autocratic ones. Haiti and Peru made the cut, despite some obvious anti-democratic tendencies. Pakistan’s military regime was ruled out by definition, although officials said the elected government that was ousted last month might have been left out too because of its restrictions on opposition politics.

State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said the conference will be the first in which participation is limited to democracies. He said the gathering will adopt a declaration spelling out just what it takes to qualify as a democracy.

A senior State Department official said the declaration may be used as a yardstick to measure the performance of countries that sign it, much as the human rights provisions of the 1975 Helsinki treaty were invoked against the Soviet Union and the other Communist countries of Eastern Europe. Historians believe that the Helsinki pact played an important role in bringing down the Iron Curtain.

Countries attending next year’s conference will be encouraged to form working groups to discuss issues such as the best ways to deal with organized crime, corruption and terrorism. They also may form democratic caucuses in the United Nations and other international organizations.

Plans for the meeting were developed by representatives of the United States, Poland, Chile, the Czech Republic, India, Mali, Colombia and South Korea. U.S. officials said the group used a relaxed definition of democracy to include as many countries as possible. One senior official said that if Washington were issuing invitations on its own, it might have left out a few of the 130 countries.

“The standard we’ve agreed to use is whether inviting a country will advance the democratic process in that country,” the senior official said in a telephone interview. “An elected government will not be invited if it has shut down the opposition. Pakistan was very close to the line even before the coup.”

He said the planners debated for a long time about whether to include Haiti and Peru, where elected presidents brook very little opposition. Eventually, all countries in the Western Hemisphere except Cuba were invited.

The official said the conference declaration is expected to outline several attributes of democracy: Free and fair elections must be held at regular intervals, and the winners must be allowed to form a government. Opposition movements must be allowed to operate freely. The judiciary and press must be free and independent. Nongovernment citizen groups must be allowed to operate freely.