US praises Kuwaiti democracy

The US hailed Kuwait's democratic experience in the Middle East as a model for the region, describing the newly-approved Palestinian UNESCO membership as a "symbolic gain" that is "unfortunate" and "a diversion" from negotiations with Israel. "As I think the Kuwaiti experience demonstrates, they've had a parliamentary system for a number of years now and very open debate inside Kuwait. But it doesn't come automatically; the skills inherent to democratic politics are something that everyone needs to learn and every society is constantly seeking to perfect," the US Deputy Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Tamara Wittes told reporters. She was speaking in a live televised web conference from Washington, aimed at discussing the Arab Spring revolutions. "I think that one of the most important ways that we can do that is by bringing those newly-emerging democracies together with other democratic societies, whether they're from Europe, the western hemisphere, or Southeast Asia. The community of democracies is very diverse and every democracy has its own experiences to offer." Responding to a KUNA question, she said "Kuwait has a special role to play this year in working together with its neighbor governments. This year, Kuwait will be hosting the Forum for the Future, which is an annual meeting of the G8 governments and the governments from the region along with civil society organizations from all across the Middle East. It's an annual opportunity for governments and citizens to dialogue together about the need for reform, about setting priorities, and about how to advance the process together, working as partners. So I'm glad that Kuwait is hosting that meeting. We look forward to participating, and I hope to be there in a few weeks." On the Middle East issue, she said that the US fully backs a two-state solution where Israel and Palestine live side-by-side in peace, and that achieving what she described as "symbolic gains", referring to Palestine's recent UNESCO membership, is not going to get Palestinians any closer to their aspirations of statehood. "What we've been focused on in our own work has been bringing the Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table, where they can settle the remaining issues between them and achieve that negotiated two-state solution. That is the only path to lasting stability and peace for both peoples, the peace that they both so richly deserve, so the vote at UNESCO was in our view unfortunate and a diversion in many ways from the real work that needs to get done at the negotiating table." On the US role in the event of an apparent assumption of power by tribal and religious movements in Yemen, who might practice corrupt means in office, she said it was up to the Yemeni people to address the situation "who need to hold their new leaders accountable for the promises that they've made. "In order to do that, you need good democratic rules, good institutions, and you need an environment in which rights are respected, so that Yemeni citizens can speak freely about what's going on and can hold their governments to account. All the work the US has tried to do diplomatically with others in the international community to promote a political transition in Yemen is that we have held in mind these aspirations." On this same threat in other Arab Spring countries, she added that "There's no doubt that political transitions are uncertain and we've seen through periods of history, that great revolutions ... were hijacked by those with an extreme agenda, who then pushed others out of the political sphere and began trampling on democratic rights and values." She said countries worried about these developments "should pay attention that the aspirations of citizens are respected in the way these transitions move forward," explaining that, that meant people should be able to express their ideas freely amid a government that commits itself to not using violence to achieve political goals and treats all equally. On US policies toward the Middle East amid accusations of political party funding, she said that "it is not US policy to fund any political party, not in the Arab world and not anywhere else in the world. In fact, it's against our policy to fund political parties. "What we do in our efforts to support democratic development is to provide training and assistance on a non-partisan basis to political parties, political candidates, and campaign managers, who want to learn how they could be more effective in the electoral process. We provide that assistance in a non-partisan way through NGOs that open their programs to all parties that reject violence and embrace the democratic process. We are very interested in promoting a quality democratic process. We are not pushing for a particular outcome." Wittes asserted that deep underlying developments in the region illustrated signs of the approach of the Arab Spring clearly. She explained that "those include the demography; the fact that more than half the Arab world are young people under the age of 30, the developments in economics, to be frank; the stagnation and concerns about corruption in many places and changes in the information environment - in the media environment, the fact that people have more access to information, about what was going on in other countries, so that they could compare their situations to others and really look at what it was they wanted to achieve. "All of these changes have been building for years, for a decade or more, and Secretary (of State Hillary) Clinton in fact made note of these changes just under a year ago, last January, before (former President Zine El Abidine) Ben Ali left Tunisia, before what became known as the Arab Spring really got underway. She told Arab leaders gathered in Doha at the G8 MENA Forum for the Future that they needed to respond to the aspirations of their own citizens for change and that without that, they would not be able to build strong foundations for their societies and for the region to the future."(