WASHINGTON, Feb 19: US President George W. Bush has praised Pakistan as a "country which is evolving, showing what is possible in terms of a free society, and an active parliament and, at the same time, honouring Islam."

He said this in response to a question in a wide-ranging interview with the Middle East Television Network. Mr Bush said he respected religion of other people. "I'm a religious man myself. I believe we pray to the same Almighty God. I want people to know that I believe in peace. I want there to be peace."

On being asked whether he was concerned that Iraq's neighbours might work to undermine democracy "because it doesn't suit the region," Mr Bush said: "Well, it's an interesting question.

I certainly hope not. But if - look, one of the neighbours to Iraq is Turkey. And they withstood any pressure, if there was any pressure, to undermine the development of a free and secular society. They still maintain its respect for Islam." "Pakistan is another country which is evolving, showing what is possible in terms of a free society, and an active parliament, and at the same time, honouring Islam."

He said diplomacy did not work in Iraq, while it did work in the case of Libya. "Well, it didn't work. It was tried for 12 years and it didn't work. And the world continually said 'disarm', and he didn't do it.

And finally, I went to the UN and said to the UN, for your sake and for our sake - you, the UN's sake - for our sake, America, and for the world's sake, let us enforce these resolutions."

Asked that he had a couple of phone calls with the Syrian president after Sept 11 "and things looked that the president of Syria was going in the right direction, according to your administration. And then things went sour. What happened?"

Mr Bush said: "I think we made some legitimate requests. I said, look, Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. They are headquartered in your country. You need to shut down those headquarters. You need to prevent terrorist activities from being planned and/or orders emanating out of Syria."

Secondly, he added: "You've got to work on the border to make sure that the border between Iraq and Syria is not porous but, in fact, you are able to stop the flow of people and contraband and information back and forth. We don't want terrorists coming in from Syria into Iraq to kill innocent Iraqis and/or American troops."

He praised Colonel Qadhafi of Libya saying, United States "looks forward to working with him." "But first things first. We had no relationship with Libya. And now the relationship can improve because he has made a very wise decision to disclose programmes and dismantle those programmes. To me, it's a signal that Colonel Qadhafi is interested in peace and a resumption of relations with a country like the United States. And that will begin to change the relationship."

Right now, he said, the US wanted to make sure that "we all fulfil our obligations. And a key obligation is for the United States and Great Britain and the IAEA to work with the Libyans to fully disclose and dismantle in a transparent way weapons programmes." -APP