Bush speech condemned in Mideast

By G.G. LaBelle
The Associated Press

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CAIRO, Egypt — Iran told President Bush to mind his own business yesterday, a day after he called for greater democracy in the Middle East. Similar and equally caustic views were expressed by commentators across the region.

While some commentators stressed that most people in the Middle East genuinely want democracy, Bush's preaching on freedom aroused resentment in a region where the United States is accused of waging war on Iraq and siding blindly with Israel against the Palestinians.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi condemned Bush's speech as an "obvious interference in Iran's internal affairs," the Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

"No individual, or group, has ever commissioned Mr. Bush to safeguard their rights ... and basically, keeping in mind the dark record of the United States in suppressing the democratic movements around the globe, he is not in a position to talk about such issues," Asefi was quoted as saying.

Newspaper editorials and columnists across the region, while praising the merits of democracy, said Washington either couldn't or wouldn't help freedom flourish in the Arab world.

"Arabs want democracy. They hate their corrupt regimes more than they hate the United States," wrote Abdul Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of the London-based Arabic daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi.

"But," he added, "they are not going to listen attentively to the speech of the American president, first, because the consecutive American administrations, in the past 50 years, supported those regimes ... and because all true democracies in the world came as a result of internal struggle, not due to foreign intervention, particularly American."

A signed editorial in the leading Lebanese daily An-Nahar described the speech as "very attractive words" but said that "before they become tangible policies that deal with the real problems, they will continue to be boring, empty rhetoric."

"Exposing the region's ills is useless. We already know them. ... What is required is a realization that the underlying problem continues to be Palestine and the obscene American bias for Israel and against Arabs, their interests and hopes," said the commentary by columnist Sahar Baasiri.

Bush said in his speech that Western governments had been wrong for decades in backing undemocratic, corrupt leaders in the Middle East, and he renewed his criticism of Iran and Syria, both of which he has accused of fostering terrorism.

Bush was careful to say that Middle Eastern democracy need not imitate America's system and praised some Arab governments — all U.S. allies — for taking small steps toward democracy.

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