WASHINGTON, Nov 6: US President George Bush on Thursday challenged Iran and Syria and even key ally Egypt to adopt democracy and broke with past US policy by vowing Washington would not support Arab states that reject liberty.

“The regime in Tehran must heed the democratic demands of the Iranian people or lose its last claim to legitimacy,” Mr Bush said in a sweeping foreign policy speech. He said Syrian leaders as well as those ousted in Iraq had promised a restoration of ancient glories, but instead left “a legacy of torture, oppression, misery and ruin”.

Of Egypt, whose president, Hosni Mubarak, has been a vital Middle East interlocutor for successive US presidents, the US president said: “The great and proud nation of Egypt has shown the way toward peace in the Middle East and now should show the way toward democracy in the Middle East.”

The speech was Mr Bush’s latest attempt to justify the invasion of Iraq as necessary to foster democracy in the region at a time when he is under fire for mounting US troop casualties and as anti-Americanism spreads among many Muslims who feel Islam is under attack.

Mr Bush declared a failure of past US policy spanning 60 years in support of governments not devoted to political freedom.

“Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe, because in the long run stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty,” the president said.

He called for democracy throughout the Middle East, praising the tentative steps that are taking place in such nations as Morocco, Bahrain, Kuwait and even Saudi Arabia.

“Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom and never even have a choice in the matter? I, for one, do not believe it,” Mr Bush said.—Reuters