11 October 2004	Monday	25 Shaban 1425

WASHINGTON, Oct 10: Democratic presidential contender John Kerry, in an interview published on Sunday, slammed President George W. Bush's Middle East policy, saying democracy cannot be imposed on foreign nations.

"In (President George W. Bush's) administration, the approach is that democracy is the automatic, easily embraced alternative to every ill in the region," Kerry told the New York Times Magazine.

"You can't impose it on people," the Massachusetts senator said. "You have to bring them to it. You have to invite them to it. You have to nurture the process." Kerry, who will face Bush in the November 2 election, accused the Republican president of being mostly disengaged in the Middle East and of fighting a "myopic kind of war."

"We need to engage more directly and more respectfully with Islam, with the state of Islam, with religious leaders, mullahs, imams, clerics, in a way that proves this is not a clash with the British and the Americans and the old forces they remember from the colonial days," he said.

"And that's all about your diplomacy," Kerry told the magazine, adding that such a strategy can be "dramatically effective in the short term." "A new presidency with the right moves, the right language, the right outreach, the right initiatives, can dramatically alter the world's perception of us very, very quickly," he added.

As president, Kerry said he would approach the leaders of Egypt and Jordan to change negative views about the United States in the region and get US businesses involved to improve the Middle East's economy. "We just haven't been doing any of this stuff. We've been stunningly disengaged, with the exception of Iraq," he said.

"I mean, you ever hear anything about the 'road map' anymore?" he asked, referring to the internationally backed plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. "No. You ever hear anything about anything anymore? No," said Kerry. "I think we're fighting a very narrow, myopic kind of war." -AFP