*EPF203 09/30/2003
Powell Asks Business Leaders to Help Empower Arab World
(Says investment and trade can lay foundation for a new Middle East) (770)

By Stephen Kaufman
Washington File Staff Writer

Detroit -- Secretary of State Colin Powell has called upon business leaders assembled at the first U.S.-Arab Economic Forum to invest in the Arab world and lay the foundations for a peaceful, prosperous and free Middle East.

Speaking in Detroit September 29 , Powell said that although the United States was seeking to empower men, women and children in the region through programs such as the Middle East Partnership Initiative and the Millennium Challenge Account, there were limits to what governments could do.

"We can open the door, but you are the ones who must walk through," Powell told the audience.

"Where conditions are ripe, invest, trade, buy and sell. You will reward your workers and shareholders with good business. You will reward Arab workers and families with good wages. You will reward Arab governments with incentives with continued good policies. And in these ways, you will be doing your part to lay the foundations for the new Middle East," he said.

The secretary said that all across the Arab world breadwinners, women and young people were frustrated due to a lack of empowerment, lack of jobs, and unrealized potential.

"Until each and every one of them goes to bed at night facing a dawn of hope, not frustration, our work will not be done," he said.

Powell said the United States is following three major policy initiatives designed to build hope and prosperity. He said the Millennium Challenge Account, to which the Bush administration has initially committed $10 billion, would be directed toward governments, including those in the Middle East, that demonstrate a commitment toward democracy and openness.

Also, Powell said the United States is helping Arab countries join the World Trade Organization and negotiating bilateral free trade agreements designed to lead to the establishment of the Middle East as a free trade area within a decade.

The third initiative, the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), is aimed directly at the Arab world; through it, the United States is directly supporting individuals and organizations in the region "who are already working to broaden economic opportunity, expand popular participation, and improve education," he said.

"We do not wish to judge others," cautioned Powell. "We do not wish to preach to others. We certainly do not wish to coerce others. We do wish to help others and, by doing so, help ourselves."

The Middle East must not remain a "source of violence and terrorism, fueled by poverty, alienation and despair," he said.

For decades, he said, the United States has "played defense, reacting to crises as they have arisen."

"That is no longer good enough. We must get ahead of the future, by starting now to lay the foundation for a future of hope," said Powell.

The secretary outlined recent accomplishments, such as the Arab Judicial Forum in Bahrain, a program to link high schools in Yemen and the United States through the Internet, and the disbursement of micro-loans to Arab women entrepreneurs. He said internships for Arab women with American companies would also be forthcoming, "giving these future business leaders the opportunity of a lifetime."

Powell invited others in the region and in the international community to be partners towards promoting reform and economic advancement throughout the region.

"We are doing this for mothers and fathers who will not read our speeches or watch them on television, but who go to bed every night wondering whether their children will be properly clothed or fed or educated," he said.

Those people, he said, have been told that participatory politics and a free market economy would improve their lives. "[N]ow they look to us to deliver," he said. "If we let them down, then democracy and free markets have no meaning, and the future of hope will recede."

No task is more important, he said, because of continuing war, revolution, boycotts and terrorism generated in the region over the past half century, including the development and use of weapons of mass destruction.

Powell said conflict is not due to a "clash of civilizations, as the terrorists and the prophets of doom would have us believe." There is only a struggle to defend values common to most Arabs and Americans, he said, namely the hope for a peaceful world and the ability to raise children "in prosperity and dignity."

With the huge stakes involved for every American and every Arab, "failure is not an option," Powell said.

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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