On first trip to Mideast, Obama has delicate task

As Obama shares a meal today with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and then flies to Cairo for a much-anticipated speech tomorrow aimed at the world's estimated 1.6 billion Muslims, he intends to open a dialogue to improve US-Muslim relations and to highlight shared values and the contributions of Muslim-Americans, but avoid the blunt language of promoting democracy that Bush made a cornerstone of his foreign policy.

Behind the scenes, however, Obama has opted to continue signature Bush-era democracy programs and is on track to greatly increase their funding.

"They want to be less vocal on their democracy efforts," said Kent Patton, deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs under Bush. "They believe the Bush administration was too vocal, that was coun terproductive. . . . But I do believe that they see the value in these programs and in the broader effort. Right now, they are just shifting the means to achieve the same ends that President Bush was trying to achieve."

Obama's 2010 budget proposal seeks $86 million for the Middle East Partnership Initiative, a program developed in 2002 by Elizabeth Cheney, daughter of the former vice president, and that promotes training of government officials, entrepreneurs, and activists, up from $50 million in 2009. Obama's budget also seeks to nearly double, to $1.4 billion, funding for the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a program started in 2004 that uses aid as an incentive for government reform in the developing world. He also wants an increase in US contributions, from $3 million to $14 million, to a United Nations fund aimed at strengthening civil society and democratic governance around the world.

Obama's budget request tracks closely with Bush's requests last year, but analysts say the Democratic-controlled Congress is poised to grant more of Obama's requests.

But some advocates say money is not enough. Obama has come under fire from both human rights groups and conservative groups for refraining from using the presidency as a bully pulpit to press democratic reforms in the Middle East.

"This administration has been very quiet so far," said Andrew Albertson, executive director of The Project on Middle East Democracy, a nonprofit research group. "It's hard to have this money go out the door without pairing it with public support and private diplomacy. I believe that the administration does need to put a stake in the ground and say, 'We care about democracy.' "

Tamara Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who tracks US democracy funding, said programs that train Arab journalists, opposition groups, and human rights activists only work if coupled with diplomacy that ensures they won't later be imprisoned or killed. "I am heartened by Obama's budget request," Wittes said. "The question is whether he'll put his mouth where his money is."

Obama defended his low-key approach in a series of interviews on the eve of his trip, even as he said he wanted to promote human rights as a universal value and American values of "democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion."

"We're not going to get countries to embrace our values simply by lecturing or through military means," Obama said on National Public Radio on Monday.

"The danger I think is when the United States or any country thinks that we can simply impose these values on another country with a different history and a different culture," he told the BBC.

Many presidents have had to walk the line between supporting allies that are powerful, autocratic regimes, or advocating for their oppressed people. For decades, the US government has given military protection and economic aid to autocratic governments, believing that the stability they bring is in US interests, particularly in the turmoil-prone Middle East.

But after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration saw democracy as the best antidote to Islamic radicalism.

In 2005, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice issued a warning for US allies to reform, declaring in a speech in Cairo that "for 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither."

Bush delivered a similar message that year at the National Endowment for Democracy, declaring that "Islamic radicalism" will be defeated by freedom, because "free peoples will own the future."

Bush's message, coupled with his new programs, met with some initial success, as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak held the country's first multiparty elections and other countries allowed unprecedented political participation.

But Bush's democracy push - never popular with Middle Eastern governments - eventually alienated ordinary people, as he used it to justify the war in Iraq, and lost steam during his final years in office as Islamists began winning elections.

After the Muslim Brotherhood won seats in the Egyptian Parliament, the White House stopped pressuring Egypt to reform. When the anti-Israeli militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah won elections in Gaza and the West Bank, and Lebanon, respectively, the Bush administration actively undermined them.

By the time Bush left office, many Arabs saw US democracy promotion as a code word for imperialism. The approval rating for US leaders last year was just 6 percent in Egypt and 12 percent in Saudi Arabia, according to a Gallup poll released yesterday. Under Obama, US leaders already have higher ratings, with 25 percent and 29 percent, respectively, the poll said.

Obama took office vowing to "talk less and do more" about democracy, his aides have said. He didn't use the word democracy in his inaugural address. Instead, he told autocratic regimes "you are on the wrong side of history" but that "we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."

"President Bush said on more than one occasion that 'if you stand up for freedom, we will stand with you,' " said Ali Banuazizi, a political science professor at Boston College. "That could almost be read as an invitation to insurrection. I think Obama's message has been more measured."

As of last week, Obama had no meetings scheduled with activists or opposition leaders in Saudi Arabia or Egypt, but aides say that Obama won't shy from tackling prickly subjects such as human rights and political repression in his speech.

Obama's approach to the subject has led to skepticism among some democracy advocates. Earlier this week, Human Rights Watch released a statement urging Obama to be more vocal, saying "ignoring human rights abuses by US allies won't help bring about the change so many Saudis and Egyptians long for."

J. Scott Carpenter, a fellow at the conservative-leaning Washington Institute who headed the Middle East democracy promotion effort under Bush, said he fears that Obama will use the programs to emphasize common values, like economic prosperity, but downplay the idea of democracy.

"These programs will be rebranded in such a way to support the notion of building a prosperous society," Carpenter said. "But Obama doesn't talk about human rights. He doesn't talk about democracy, as if those are Bush words. But they are not. They are American words."