The Clipboard: Bush team 'causing chaos in Arab world'

From an article¹:

A group of Arab intellectuals endorsed by the Bush administration turned their wrath on America yesterday, accusing it of undermining reform in the Arab world by backing Israel, weakening the United Nations and creating chaos in Iraq...

...But their latest "Arab Human Development Report", issued under the auspices of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), will make much less comfortable reading in Washington.

"As a result of the invasion of their country, the Iraqi people have emerged from the grip of a despotic regime that violated their basic rights and freedoms, only to fall under a foreign occupation that increased human suffering," said the authors.

They said America's repeated veto - or threat of veto - at the UN Security Council to block resolutions critical of Israel's policy towards Palestinians "has pushed many people in the region to lose hope of obtaining justice from global governance and could exacerbate a tendency towards extremism". (link)

Gee, ya think?

---

Complete text of the article, Bush team 'causing chaos in Arab world', by Anton La Guardia

A group of Arab intellectuals endorsed by the Bush administration turned their wrath on America yesterday, accusing it of undermining reform in the Arab world by backing Israel, weakening the United Nations and creating chaos in Iraq.

President George W Bush has made the promotion of democracy in the Middle East a key priority, saying that reform was the best means of undermining violent Islamist groups.

He eagerly seized on the work of the same Arab scholars who drew up a report in 2002 that bemoaned the "democratic deficit" in a region ruled by all-powerful kings, princes, sheikhs and presidents for life.

But their latest "Arab Human Development Report", issued under the auspices of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), will make much less comfortable reading in Washington.

"As a result of the invasion of their country, the Iraqi people have emerged from the grip of a despotic regime that violated their basic rights and freedoms, only to fall under a foreign occupation that increased human suffering," said the authors.

They said America's repeated veto - or threat of veto - at the UN Security Council to block resolutions critical of Israel's policy towards Palestinians "has pushed many people in the region to lose hope of obtaining justice from global governance and could exacerbate a tendency towards extremism".

A UNDP spokesman denied claims that the US had blocked publication of the report earlier this year. But he admitted that publication had been delayed because of disagreements among the authors, and UNDP's demands for changes.

He said UNDP kept the report at "arm's-length" - agreeing to publish it as a document worthy of discussion without "endorsing every dot and comma" of the text.

The report surveys events only until October 2004 - so does not deal with what the US regards as key achievements in democratisation.

reference=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/04/06/wbush06.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/04/06/ixworld.html