Rice stresses need for democracy

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pledged yesterday to nudge even the closest US allies toward democracy, reversing what she called a 60-year trend of supporting authoritarian regimes for the sake of regional stability.

Speaking at a luncheon for the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Rice highlighted the need for democratic progress in Russia and Pakistan, two key allies in the war on terror where the Bush administration has often kept mum as top officials rolled back democratic reforms.

Rice said a top priority when she meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow next week will be ''to find a relationship with Russia that can bring Russia west so that Russia continues its progress toward a more democratic and open and free market society."

Rice also highlighted the need for Pakistan to return to democratic national elections in 2007 when the term of current President Pervez Musharraf expires.

Promoting democracy has become the central theme of US foreign policy in President Bush's second term; top administration officials say terrorism stems from the lack of liberty. Yesterday, Rice told the editors that the ''freedom deficit" in the world was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.

For 60 years, she said, both Democratic and Republican presidents were ''prepared to have a policy of exceptionalism in the Middle East concerning democracy," turning a blind eye to authoritarian regimes or repressive governments to avoid instability. The 2001 terrorist attacks revealed to the world that ''a terrible malignancy had grown up in the freedom deficit there that led people to ideologies of hatred that led them to fly airplanes into our buildings on a fine September day."

Rice also singled out China, a rising world economic and political power, as a country that must one day accept democracy.

''We believe that China must eventually embrace some form of open, genuinely representative government if it is fully to reap the benefits and meet the challenges of its changing role in the world," she said.

The nation's editors greeted Rice warmly, giving her a standing ovation when she stepped to the dais. Few questions were confrontational; one editor asked why she had chosen John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations after he had been such a staunch critic of the world body, ''bordering on disdainful."

Rice smiled and answered that she believes Bolton's criticism is exactly what the UN needs now as it struggles to reform itself in the wake of a series of scandals.

''Yes, he has had a lot to say about the need for the United Nations to look different than it looks now," she said. ''It is no secret to anyone that the United Nations cannot survive as a vital force in international politics if it does not reform -- if it doesn't reform its organizations, if it doesn't reform its secretariat, if it doesn't reform its management practices."

But perhaps the most surprising news came from the editor who introduced Rice, saying the secretary of state once held the title of ''Disco Queen of South Bend, Indiana."

''You've got quite a research department," Rice responded in the opening sentences of her address. ''I want to assure everybody, it's actually not that hard to be the disco queen of South Bend, Indiana," Rice said. ''There's not that much competition in South Bend, Indiana."