DAVOS, Switzerland, 31 January 2005 — While the United States’ drive for democracy in the Middle East faced a crucial test in Iraq yesterday, reformers across the Arab world fear Washington’s embrace of their cause could be a “hug of death”.

Some of the torchbearers of Arab reform came to this year’s World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos to debate the ripples of change stirring from the Atlantic to the Gulf. Almost every government had a tale to tell — a successful Palestinian presidential election, education reform in Jordan, economic liberalization in Egypt, a bold, modern family law in Morocco, even the first local elections soon in Saudi Arabia.

Yet some Arab reformers say there may be less to the reform talk than meets the eye.

“There is still a huge gap between vision and reality,” said Ghassan Salame, a former Lebanese culture minister who teaches at Paris’ Political Science Institute.

Intellectuals say some governments are doing the minimum to deflect US pressure for change, while widespread hostility to American policies in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict risks discrediting genuine reformers. Iraqi Public Works Minister Nasreen Berwari assured global business and political leaders that election would lead to the birth of a democratic, prosperous Iraq. But three paradoxes are troubling campaigners for democracy:

* The two freest recent Arab elections have taken place under foreign occupation in Iraq and the Palestinian territories;

* While Arabs are told they need more freedom if their economies are to blossom, the countries and regions around the world with the highest growth rates in 2004 were mainly authoritarian rather than democratic — China, Vietnam, the Emirate of Dubai and Russia;

* Most of the Arab reform moves afoot are top-down efforts led by the Western-educated sons of long-entrenched rulers rather than being driven by indigenous civil society, and they aim to keep incumbents in place rather than allow alternation in power.

Many of the speakers in workshops at the Davos forum spoke on ground rules that mean they cannot be identified by name, but some were willing to talk openly.

“Reform and transformation in depth cannot be a top-down action. We have got to build civil society from the bottom up,” said Ismael Seralgeldin, director of Egypt’s Library of Alexandria and co-author of a manifesto for Arab reform.

US pressure for change has grown since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, and many Arabs interpreted President George W. Bush’s inauguration vow to fight tyranny and promote “freedom” as an uncomfortable warning.

In much of the world, democracy means political pluralism with parties periodically alternating in power, but in the Arab world there is no example of a ruler being voted out of office. One Arab intellectual at the Davos session joked that his government’s approach to reform reminded him of the Count in Lampedusa’s novel “The Leopard” who said: “Everything must change so that everything can stay the same.”