U.S. promotes Mideast reform amid Arab scepticism (Hearts and minds forum)

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L11264522.htm

<snip>"This forum is imperialist," said Khaled Soufiani, a Moroccan human rights activist who attended a peaceful protest by about 500 people outside the Moroccan parliament on Friday night, saying the mere fact that it was being held legitimized "American military aggression on the Arab and Muslim world."

The Moroccan business daily L'Economiste summed up the forum in a pointed, front-page cartoon on Friday that showed a U.S. soldier in full military gear pointing a submachine gun at an Arab man lying on the ground. snip

The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the bloody insurgency that rages a year and a half after former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was toppled have undermined U.S. credibility among Arabs already angry about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The (Iraq) bloodshed "and the torture of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison ... have ruined any chance of a rapprochement between Americans and people in the Middle East," Saad Eddine Othmani, head of Morocco's main opposition party, the Islamist Justice and Development Party, told Reuters.

"How can Americans in this situation bring us democracy?" he asked.

more

Here is the front-page cartoon in the Moroccan paper:

"I hope that we can come to an understanding of the need for reform and modernisation in the Broader Middle East and North African region," the soldier is depicted telling the Arab, quoting Powell.