LONDON, 5 February 2005 — Saudi Arabia should be allowed to experiment with democracy at its own pace and not be criticized as a dictatorship, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday.
“Obviously countries are going to move at their own pace, they are going to move toward the liberalization of their politics in the context of their own traditions, religious, historical and others,” she told a news conference at the end of her talks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.
“No one can seek to impose a particular model or a particular set of solutions to the question of how one answers the universal aspirations of people for liberty, the simple right for people to be able to say what they think,” she said. “But we do expect that there should be movement toward reform in all of the countries of the Middle East.”
Rice said that building democracy often takes time, as it did in the United States, when equal rights were not immediately extended to groups such as women and blacks.
At the news conference with Rice, Straw praised Saudi Arabia. “You can now feel the winds of change blowing through the Arab world, and there are quite significant changes actually taking place now and in the near future in Saudi Arabia,” he said.
Attack on Iran ‘Not on Agenda’
Secretary Rice said a US attack on Iran “is simply not on the agenda at this point,” despite the United States’ continued criticism of Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons ambitions and human rights record.
Rice would not say whether the United States supports a change of government in Iran. US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has said regime change is not the US goal. Rice said there is broad international agreement that Iran cannot be allowed to use a civilian nuclear power project to conceal a weapons program — a charge which Tehran denies.
