Bush to Pitch a New Mideast Reform Initiative to Region

After an earlier effort was met by a storm of criticism, the Bush administration is completing a retooled and expanded plan to promote democratic reform in a Muslim world that has grown more wary of U.S. objectives.

American officials are putting the finishing touches on a new Greater Middle East Initiative, the principal tool for achieving President Bush’s goal of reforms in countries the United States traditionally has not challenged.

But although the administration has tried to make the plan palatable to Arab and European allies, it remains unclear what reception it will receive, especially from Arab nations that have argued that reforms can’t be imposed by outsiders.

Since the initial form of the plan was disclosed, Arab attitudes toward the United States have soured amid bloody clashes in Iraq, revelations of abuses of Iraqi prisoners and Bush’s blessing of a controversial, unilateral Israeli plan for the Palestinian territories.

Those issues complicate the timing of the new proposal. But officials are moving ahead anyway because they hope to gain a key Arab League endorsement this month and announce it as a joint project of the G-8 leading industrial nations at a June meeting.

Meanwhile, the administration and its NATO allies are close to completing a related proposal, the Istanbul Cooperative Initiative, that seeks to strengthen the West’s ties to Middle Eastern countries by offering them a new kind of limited military partnership. The plan is to be unveiled at a North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Istanbul, Turkey, also in June.

The Middle East initiative was developed by Bush’s staff after the president made a speech in November that broke with previous U.S. policy by declaring that the United States must push harder to bring about democratic reform.

U.S. presidents have often overlooked the undemocratic practices of friendly regimes in the region. Bush, however, declared that accepting “a lack of freedom in the Middle East has done nothing to make us safe” and set the course for a more assertive approach to reform.

But the publication of a working paper for the proposal in the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al Hayat provoked protests from Mideast capitals accusing Washington of planning to reshape their societies without their participation.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak called the plan “delusional” while other critics accused the White House of promoting a “democratic imperialism” or seeking a new justification for the controversial war in Iraq.

In the intervening weeks, the administration has sought to blunt criticism by consulting widely on its retooled plan. In recent days, it has circulated working papers among Middle Eastern and European officials, reform groups and businesses.

A senior U.S. official insisted that those consultations demonstrated that the administration wanted to follow the lead of regional reformers rather than set their agenda.

“That these papers are being circulated is testimony to the fact that we want to do this together with people in the region,” the official said. “Having learned from the Al Hayat experience, we’re not going to just work something up with the G-8 and pop it on people.”

The updated plan, which includes a paper titled Notional Elements of a Plan of Support for Reform, comprises five main components.

They include a literacy program, a “microfinance” initiative to offer small loans, a regional development bank for large projects, a democracy foundation to funnel money to reform projects and a continuing forum with G-8 members to maintain a dialogue about economic and political reform with people in the region.

In an effort to show that the United States does not aim to force reform but to develop an international effort to assist movements for change, the document cites pro-reform language from recent conferences in the region.

In February, some European governments threatened to block the proposal if it was not accompanied by a greater effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Responding to that, a cover paper says: “We do not see this reform paper as a substitute for progress on Arab-Israeli peace. However, we cannot allow reform to be held hostage to the peace process. We believe we must pursue both separately.”

One European diplomat, speaking anonymously, said the administration has taken a more humble tone and more modest approach in the wake of the clash earlier this year. Amid rising anti-Americanism in the region, “this is much more difficult than before ... and my impression is that the American ambition was much higher a few weeks ago.”

But some people familiar with the documents say that despite the different tone, the proposal is essentially the same -- and has even been expanded in certain aspects, such as the G-8 forum that would try to maintain a dialogue on reform issues.

One reform expert who is not in government, and asked to remain unidentified because the proposal remains secret, said the plan retains the element that is most likely to disturb autocratic regimes in the region -- the effort to increase democratic competition for political power.

“I don’t think there’s anything revolutionary in this plan, but it does reflect a seriousness,” said the expert, who reported being told that the administration intended to put “real resources” into the effort.

Amy Hawthorne, a specialist on Middle East reform at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, hadn’t seen the text, but based on other sources, she said, it includes several worthwhile elements.

Nevertheless, she remains concerned that the scale of the effort is considerably smaller than necessary to address a problem that extends across a region from Morocco to Bangladesh.

“It does seem to still fall short when you think of the magnitude of the challenge,” she said.

Reform advocates are waiting to see whether the administration will prove its commitment by putting up substantial amounts of money for the program.

If the figure is seen as paltry -- less than $1 billion, perhaps -- some say the administration would be vulnerable to the recurrent criticism that it fails to follow up on major initiatives. That accusation has been leveled about the White House’s commitment to the “road map” to Arab-Israeli peace.

The immediate question facing the administration is how much encouragement, if any, it will receive from governments in the region. Officials had hoped that the Arab League would adopt a resolution calling for reform at a March meeting in Tunis, Tunisia.

Instead, the meeting broke up in disarray, partly because of the divisive reform issue. Now U.S. officials hope that Arab League officials will adopt such a resolution at meetings scheduled for late May.

Yet most comments on the subject from the region continue to be skeptical, if not hostile. One U.S. official acknowledged that as the administration waits for a positive signal, “we could get something far different.”