Rice: Democracy in Middle East will be slow, difficult

JERUSALEM -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday the Bush administration is under no illusion that democratic change in the Middle East will be neither swift nor easy.\n"We are not naive about the pace or the difficulty of democratic change," Rice said in remarks prepared for delivery during a memorial forum honoring slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.\nEven so, she said, "We know that the longing for democratic change is deep and urgently felt."\nRice spoke a day after part of the White House democracy agenda ran into trouble. An international conference on democracy in the Middle East ended without a formal agreement because Egypt threw up last-minute road blocks.\nRice is on a Middle East swing that began in Iraq and included Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. In Israel, she will see Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and then Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank. She also plans a brief stop in Jordan Monday to show solidarity with a U.S. ally rocked by terrorist bombings that killed more than 50 people last week.\nRice mentioned the Jordan attacks in her speech Sunday, and she noted the outrage and street protests it caused.\n"Leaders and clerics and private citizens are now stepping forward and taking to the streets and calling this evil by its name," Rice said. That change and others offer new hope for peace, she said.\n"There is now growing agreement that democracy is the only path to true stability, to true legitimacy and to lasting peace," Rice said. "Of course, many skeptics still question whether more freedom will truly lead to more peace in this region. I believe it will."\nIn Saudi Arabia, the Saudi foreign minister said after meeting with Rice that he is less worried that U.S. policies in Iraq will bring on a civil war there. Prince Saud al-Faisal pledged anew to contribute $1 billion for rebuilding Iraq's shattered infrastructure.\nBefore Iraqi voters passed a new constitution last month, Saud had told U.S. reporters he worried that sectarian disputes complicated by the U.S. presence in Iraq were pulling the country toward civil war.\nHe said Saudi Arabia is working to distribute the reconstruction money promised earlier this year, but he gave no date for it. The United States has chided Arab states for not doing enough to support post-Saddam Iraq and for being reluctant to open embassies there.\nRice said Saudi Arabia can do more to root out the sources of terror financing, but she said the two countries are working together well.\n"The reason that countries or leaders are fighting terrorism is not to please us, not to please the United States," Rice said. "It's because their own people are dying ... because their own region is suffering a sense of instability."\nShe also renewed criticism of Syria for dragging its feet in cooperating with a U.N. investigation into the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Beirut last February. Hariri was trying to pull his country away from Syrian domination, and his death launched street protests against Syria's 30-year political and military control in Lebanon.\n"We have to say the Syrians have not yet cooperated," Rice said, dismissing Syrian complaints about the probe and its plans to perform its own investigation.\n"That's just not going to cut it," she said.\nRelations between Riyadh and Washington suffered after the Sept. 11 attacks masterminded by the Saudi-born Osama bin Laden. Saudi Arabia has been working to rebuild a network of political and economic contacts with the United States.