FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 25, 2005
Contact: Cara Santos Pianesi, 202/939-2211, csantos@CarnegieEndowment.org

Although President Bush last week reaffirmed his commitment to fostering global democracy, the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI)—one of the main components of U.S. policy to promote Middle East reform—is falling short. Carnegie democracy promotion expert Thomas Carothers proposes a sweeping change to cure MEPI’s ills. Carothers proposes that MEPI be taken out of the State Department and relaunched as a private foundation funded by the U.S. government, akin to the Asia Foundation and the Eurasia Foundation. His plan is detailed in a new policy brief, A Better Way to Support Middle East Reform, available at www.CarnegieEndowment.org/democracy.

Relaunching MEPI as the Middle East Foundation would permit it to develop greater expertise in the region, utilize more flexible, effective aid methods, and gain some independence from other U.S. programs and policies that serve conflicting ends. It will also give President Bush a visible and solid achievement on Middle East reform to point to at the start of his second term - reducing the damaging gap between the President’s pro-democracy rhetoric and the real substance of U.S. policy in the region.

Carothers also asserts that the restructuring of MEPI should be part of a broader set of measures to establish a more visible, coherent institutional policy structure to pursue the goal of fundamental political and economic change in the Middle East. "Even if a more effective aid program is created, it will be of little consequence if it is not matched with vigorous and complementary U.S. diplomacy," he writes.

Thomas Carothers is director of the Carnegie Endowment’s Democracy and Rule of Law project. He is co-editor, with Marina Ottaway, of the newly-released book, Uncharted Journey: Promoting Democracy in the Middle East (Carnegie Endowment).  A Better Way to Support Middle East Reform is the latest publication in the Middle East Series from the Carnegie Endowment’s Democracy and Rule of Law project. The full series is available online. The project offers analysis and practical experience on how political reform may occur in the Arab world and what the United States and other external actors can do to encourage such change.

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