Reuters  --  Arab News

ISTANBUL, 30 June 2004 — US President George W. Bush tried to persuade Middle Eastern states yesterday that political reform was vital to combat extremism but said Washington would not impose democracy on the region.

Speaking with his back to the Middle Eastern side of the Bosphorus, the strait that divides Turkey, Bush argued that political change was needed to bring prosperity, to make governments more stable and to undercut support for militants.

“The historic achievement of democracy in the broader Middle East will be a victory shared by all,” said Bush at the end of a five-day trip to meetings with European Union and NATO leaders.

Speaking a day after US-led occupiers handed power to a United Nations-appointed interim government in Baghdad, Bush called violent Iraq “the world’s newest democracy” and an example to the rest of the region of freedom flowering.

Bush faces a tough re-election battle against Democrat John Kerry, who has criticized him for failing to win more backing for his war in Iraq. He is keen to portray the country, where 160,000 US-led forces battle militants, as heading to peace.

The Bush administration has been pushing reform in the Middle East since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on US cities, in the hope of stemming Arab hostility to the United States.

A major regional initiative Bush wanted the Group of Eight industrialized nations to adopt this year was rewritten in the face of criticism it sought to impose Western values on Arabs, was paternalistic and ignored the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Bush’s speech appeared to take note of some criticisms, accepting that reform would only take root if home-grown.

“The future of freedom in the Islamic world will be determined by the citizens of Islamic nations, not by outsiders,” he said.

He sought to defend reform as appropriate for the region, citing Muslim Turkey’s secular democracy and trying to combat perceptions that Western-style liberties inevitably meant moral laxity unacceptable to conservative Arab societies.

“Some people in Muslim cultures identify democracy with the worst of Western popular culture, and want no part of it,” he said. “There is nothing incompatible between democratic values and high standards of decency.”