In much of Mideast, Bush words stir ire

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

Hamid Reza Asefi, a spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry, condemned Bush's speech, given Thursday in Washington, as an "obvious interference in Iran's internal affairs," the country's 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.

Immediate reactions from governments and the public were few, since Bush's speech came Thursday night in the Middle East, when Muslims were breaking their daytime fast during the holy month of Ramadan -- and on the eve of the holiest day in the Muslim week.

But 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 yesterday 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 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.

Iran's state-run TV did not report the speech until yesterday afternoon and gave no details on Bush's criticism of Iran. The one newspaper published yesterday in Syria didn't cover Bush, though Syrians were able to see him live on the pan-Arab television network Al-Jazeera.

In Damascus, 37-year-old worker Ali Rida said Bush's talk didn't conceal the true US policy in the region. "If they want to export democracy through wars, we do not want it," he said.