Conference Yields a Pact to Promote Global Democracy

Representatives of more than 100 countries meeting in this Polish capital ended a first-of-its-kind democracy conference Tuesday by pledging to work together to promote democratic government throughout the world.

In the two-day conference’s concluding Warsaw Declaration, the 106 signatories pledged to uphold basic democratic principles, vowed to strengthen cooperation among themselves and hinted in diplomatically vague language at greater efforts to spread democracy to countries where it does not exist.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was more direct in a speech Tuesday, describing the fledgling organization as “a new coalition of democracies, dedicated to expanding the frontiers of freedom and to ensuring that, wherever democracy has taken root, it will not be reversed.”

The Warsaw Declaration should serve as “a warning for governments that do not practice democracy and are absent from our meeting here” and also inspire hope “for all those who want freedom and democracy,” Polish Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek said.

Of the 107 fully or partially democratic countries attending the conference, which was held in the Parliament building, only France refused to endorse the final declaration. Its delegation issued a statement that its government did not want to commit itself to activities carried out by the democracies as a formal group.

That was an apparent reference to a passage in the declaration pledging signatories to work together in the United Nations and other international organizations by “forming coalitions and caucuses to support . . . activities aimed at the promotion of democratic governance.”

The new grouping, which met under the title “Toward a Community of Democracies,” plans to hold a conference every two years, with the next one in Seoul. Russia attended this week’s meeting, whereas China was not present.

In France’s view, “the Western countries think a little too much that democracy is a religion and the only thing you have to do is convert,” French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine said Monday, as it became clear that his government preferred less activist goals than the conference’s organizers, which included the United States and Poland.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, in a speech Tuesday that did not mention Vedrine by name but clearly responded to his remarks, said: “We did not come to Warsaw to impose democracy. Dictators impose, democracy is chosen. Nor is democracy a religion, but it is a faith that has lifted the lives of people in every corner of the globe.”

The conference offered its strongest and most specific moral support to the struggle for democracy in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. A Monday session featured a video address by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of that nation’s democracy movement. “Democratic institutions are essential for peace and unity within the country, as well as peace and harmony within the region and within the world,” she said.

A nongovernmental “World Forum on Democracy” took place in Warsaw on Sunday through Tuesday, timed to overlap with the official ministerial-level conference. Among the panelists at the forum was exiled Chinese human rights activist Wei Jingsheng.

The activities of the ministerial conference, including its plan to meet every two years, will add to the pressure for democratization in China, Wei said.

“It’s like if a man beats his wife and children: The more that everyone pays attention to it and talks about it, the more pressure there is on that man,” Wei said. “Of course, this pressure alone isn’t enough, but it’s vital to have it.”