Bullish Bush tells regimes to change

In his most uncompromising tones yet, President George W. Bush yesterday told repressive regimes in the Middle East - some of them long-standing United States allies - that they must change their ways and meet the popular demands for reform suddenly emerging across the region.

"Authoritarian rule is not the wave of the future, it is the last gasp of a discredited past," Bush declared, serving notice that in his second term he intends to step up the pressure for democratic change throughout the Middle East.

As proof - and even as hundreds of thousands of people took part in a pro-Syrian demonstration in Beirut denouncing Western "interference" - the President for the first time gave Damascus a specific two-month deadline to withdraw its forces from Lebanon.

President Bashar Assad had an "important" choice to make, Bush declared in a wide-ranging speech to the National Defence University here. Either it could withdraw all military and intelligence personnel before the presidential election in May, or face "even greater isolation from the world".

Those elections, moreover, should be fully monitored by international observers.

With the confidence of a man who believes recent events in countries as diverse as Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are proving him right, Bush argued once more that economic prosperity and above all political reform were key to long-term victory in the "war on terrorism".

"Clearly and suddenly the thaw has begun," he said, referring to the changes across the region in the past few weeks, particularly since Iraq's election on January 30.

In words aimed at traditional US allies such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, he warned that in the transformed post September 11 world, they could no longer automatically count on Washington's support, no matter what their domestic policies.

Too often in the past "tyranny had been accommodated in the interests of stability", Bush said. But today there was no chance of economic progress without political modernisation. No society, moreover, "can advance with only half of its talent and energy - and that demands the full participation of women".

And in this struggle for democracy, Lebanon was in the front line. Making no mention of the country's deep sectarian divides - reflected in this week's competing demonstrations in Beirut - the President declared simply that "freedom will prevail in Lebanon".

Only events will prove the sincerity of those words. Previous Presidents have urged reform in the Middle East, only to acquiesce in the status quo when it seemed US strategic interests might be threatened.

- INDEPENDENT