26 September 2004	Sunday	10 Shaban 1425

NEW YORK, Sept 25: Morocco has agreed to host the first meeting of a panel that will examine a controversial US-sponsored scheme to spur reform in the Middle East and North Africa, officials said on Friday.

The so-called "Forum for the Future", an outgrowth of the US-backed "Broader Middle East and North Africa" initiative endorsed by the Group of Eight industrialized countries, will meet in Morocco in December, they said.

Moroccan Foreign Minister Mohamed Benaissa and US Secretary of State Colin Powell made the announcement after the unofficial launch of the forum held at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

The forum will gather political, civic and business leaders from at least 25 nations to look at ways to promote democratic reforms throughout the Middle East, North Africa and nearby areas including Iraq, Afghanistan and South Asia.

"These efforts have great potential to improve the lives of the people in the region," Mr Powell told reporters as he thanked Moroccan King Mohammed and Mr Benaissa for agreeing to host the forum's inaugural meeting.

Mr Benaissa said that Morocco was "honoured" to be the venue for the meeting, but officials acknowledged it had been difficult to convince any Arab nation to host an event related to a reform initiative that has been heavily criticized in the Middle East.

Mr Powell, himself, expressed surprise that several countries had volunteered to serve as the host for the second meeting of the forum.

"A week ago that was not the case," he admitted. "I think we have buy-in and this process is alive and well, it's been launched well and it will produce results."

The ambitious US-backed reform initiative drew anger and concern throughout the Muslim world when its existence was first made public earlier this year.

Many in the Middle East and some in Europe suspected that the scheme - originally called the "Greater Mideast Reform Initiative" - was simply a tool to impose western values on traditional societies.

Faced with the outcry of opposition from countries it wants as allies in the "war on terrorism", Washington was forced to alter the proposal and stipulate that any reforms must be homegrown and would not be mandated.

At the G8 summit in June, the leaders of the world's industrialized nations agreed to endorse the watered-down US proposal with lukewarm support from countries in the broader Middle East and North Africa.

Mr Powell made the point on Friday that the United States had listened to the concerns of others and agreed that "we all recognize that reform must originate within the region".

"Reform has to come from each of these countries as an individual matter," he said, adding that the upcoming meeting in Morocco "would have been unthinkable five or six months ago when we first started out".

"People said the United States and the G8 are lecturing to the broader Middle East and it isn't going to be acceptable it won't work," he said, stressing that the plan, once understood, had gained acceptability.

Despite US concessions, differences in approach were evident even in Friday's comments by Powell and Benaissa when asked about the prospects for reform amid continuing turmoil between Israel and the Palestinians and unrest in Iraq and Afghanistan. -AFP