Arab Leaders Criticize U.S. ‘Reform’ Plan

A secret American plan to “reform” the Middle East was leaked in Europe, drawing criticism from Arab leaders and throwing the Bush administration on the defensive four months before the proposal was to be launched.

The administration had hoped to enlist Europe as a partner in what it describes as a major effort to democratize the Mideast and had made plans to unveil the project at a summit of leading industrial nations in June.

The initiative is part of the broader effort to foster human rights and free-market values outlined by President Bush in November. Countries that choose to sign on could expect closer political ties, as well as U.S. economic incentives and military assistance. The effort is aimed at the Mideast, but it also includes countries from Morocco to Pakistan.

But publication of an early draft of the proposal this month in Al Hayat, a London-based, Arabic-language newspaper, has deepened anxieties among Arab leaders that plans to reshape their countries are being drawn up without them.

Some European governments, though enthusiastic about the goal of “reform,” want reassurance that the proposal isn’t an election-year gimmick or a plan to force the American way on an area already suspicious about the U.S. agenda.

The reaction was evident in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital, where the Egyptian and Saudi governments issued a statement rejecting the plans as being “imposed on Arab and Islamic countries from the outside.”

The statement, which came at the close of a meeting between Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Saudi rulers, said modernization must fulfill the public’s needs and be compatible with “their specificities and Arab identities,” according to the official Saudi Press Agency.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, questioned this week about the reaction, said that “what we are trying to do is help each of them, in the way they choose, move forward.”

Noting that a U.S. undersecretary is in the region now to discuss the plan, he said, “We would never suggest a reform plan that came from the outside.”

The effort is modeled in some ways on the 1975 Helsinki accords, which drew Eastern European countries into an international dialogue and led them toward greater human rights and freedoms. But the plan for the Mideast, to avoid the appearance of dictating to other nations, will not entail strict oversight or judgments on progress those countries are making, officials contend.

Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have touched on the effort during trips to Europe last month. And German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, in a speech in Munich, signaled his strong interest in the general goal of working to strengthen the region.

A spokeswoman for the European Union said the view from Europe was “positive.”

It is important, she added, that the initiative entail an effort to make progress on the stalled peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, and that “countries in the region be involved as partners.”

Privately, diplomats for European countries say they hope the initiative offers an opportunity for a new partnership, at a time when they are eager to overcome divisions in the transatlantic relationship over the war in Iraq.

But they worry that the initiative may be an effort to avoid engagement in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, which many believe the Bush administration has little interest in pursuing.

Some fear that, like the U.S.-backed Mideast peace plan, the plan for the wider Mideast region will have little staying power -- or will prove an effort to find a new rationale for the Iraq war, because the search for illicit weapons has faltered so far.

Another concern is that the initiative may eclipse -- or absorb -- the European Union’s effort, called the “Barcelona Process.”

That 9-year-old, $1-billion-a-year program invites countries to sign “association agreements” that offer them political contacts, trade liberalization and aid for modernization.

One European diplomat said the American initiative had become the “talk of the town” among diplomats, who were unable to decide whether to view it with eagerness or alarm.

Europeans have become increasingly interested in improving the region, he noted, as economics and immigration have drawn Europe and the Mideast closer, and terrorism has increased awareness of the nearby danger.

“Should we love this, or fear it?” the diplomat asked.

In the Middle East, reactions have been more blunt.

The Daily Star, an English-language newspaper in Beirut, called for Islamic countries to try to take advantage of the U.S. offer, but it said its expectations were not high. An effort that aims to make the region more democratic, yet doesn’t start by democratically asking those in the region what they want, “would seem to start life with a serious handicap,” it wrote.