The Forum for the Future might have proved an economic success but politically it is a pitfall, writes Sherine Bahaa The idea is American: the objective is to bolster the reputation of the United States as an advocate of democracy and playing at being international policeman. But the conclusion was rancorous. Participants in the second Forum for the Future session worked hard trying to appease the US. However, the result did not go far beyond what had already been agreed upon in the first forum which took place a year ago in Morocco, which was an agreement to set up the fund and the foundation. This year's summit of foreign ministers and other leaders from the Group of Eight (G8) countries and the Broader Middle East and North Africa (BMENA) took place at the Ritz-Carlton Bahrain and Spa over the weekend. US chief diplomat Condoleezza Rice and senior State Department official for Democracy and Freedom Liz Cheney came to turn the US vision true. The 36-nation Forum for the Future aims at promoting political, economic and social reforms in the region. Yet the conference ended on Saturday without a formal declaration, eliciting expressions of disappointment from US officials, who considered the conference a key part of US President George W Bush's Greater Middle East Initiative. But for onlookers the hidden agenda was obvious. Behind the Bush administration's push for democratic reform lies a fierce internal debate over the perceived risks of elections propelling Islamists rather than the preferred secularists to power. But with so many existing bilateral, regional and inter-regional initiatives all focussed on economic cooperation -- such as the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (the Barcelona Process), the US- Middle East Partnership initiative, and the New Neighbourhood Policy Agreement -- what can this forum possibly contribute to a region dominated by monarchies and single-party systems? France, for its part, had announced its reservations regarding the theme of the forum fearing it might overshadow the Barcelona process in the frame of the European Union's MEDA project. This in a way might explain why France was represented by its minister of education rather than its foreign minister. For the Arab populace this flood of initiatives suggest little more than the promotion of the American agenda in the region. But the two-day conference showed up the fact that the US administration is confronting a real crisis. Reports of CIA prisons run abroad in addition to the torture of prisoners all turned bad weather against the US. In addition, this week's conference followed a riotous summit a week ago in Argentina where Bush got a cold shoulder from some Latin American leaders, failed to win consensus on a free trading bloc for the Western world and endured criticism from anti-US protesters. As the two-day event drew to a close, onlookers felt that the outcome of the forum had been diverted from its original mandate: democracy. The real conclusion was money. A US-spearheaded a $100 million Fund for the Future, which will support entrepreneurs in the BMENA region, and a $50 million Foundation for the Future, which will provide grants to non- governmental organisations, will be encouraged to grow. The fund and the foundation's formation, announced at the conclusion of the forum, are mainly the result of contributions from the US, Egypt, Morocco and Denmark. A final communiqué was shelved after Egypt reportedly insisted on inserting a phrase defining the NGOs eligible for funding from the Future Fund as "officially registered". According to a draft copy of the final declaration, delegates would have pledged "to expand democratic practices, to enlarge participation in political and public life [and] to foster the roles of civil society including NGOs." "Egypt and other Arab states asked for a new clause stipulating that only institutions fully recognised by the government be allowed to receive funding," explained Bahieddin Hassan, director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Research. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit insisted that Egypt is not to blame for the summit's failure to draw up a final declaration. "We don't know why the communiqué did not come out. We don't have any objections... though we were fully aware that other countries did," said Abul-Gheit after arriving in Cairo. In a country like Egypt where all dissident groups are operating outside the legal sphere, including the Muslim Brotherhood, such a response was not surprising. Cairo's position on the clause was supported by delegations from Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain and Tunisia, however they refrained from making it public to start with, leaving Egypt to shoulder the blame. Though many might regard the Egyptian position as a deliberate attempt to be in full control of the reform process, Liz Cheney might have got it right when she argued that the US should not push the Egyptian regime in a direction that would open the door so quickly to the Muslim Brotherhood, the most organised opposition group in the country. However, reactions would not have been much better if the Egyptian regime had caved in to the US draft. For the Egyptians, as for most Arabs, reform should be home-made, not dictated by Washington. For his part, Bahrain's Foreign Minister Sheikh Khaled Bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa told reporters after the conference that the declaration will come up, perhaps, at another forum for the future next year. "We decided we will come back to it one day," he said. After Bahrain, Rice embarked on a regional tour which started in war- ravaged Iraq -- placing Jordan suddenly on the agenda after the devastating bombings that took place in Amman last week. Rice then stopped over in Saudi Arabia and rounded up her tour in Israel where she extended her stay to witness the end of the Rafah passage crisis.
