The lead writer of Washington's favourite UN report on the Arab world trashed a US democracy initiative for the Middle East and said the Bush administration had abused his report to give its ideas some credibility.
Nader Fergani, the Egyptian social scientist who has worked on three successive Arab Human Development reports, said in an article published on Thursday that the US initiative depended on the UN reports "like a drunkard leaning on a lamppost, to save himself from falling and not for enlightenment".
"Arabs have the right to ask about the credentials of those who drew out this reform project, given that the defining characteristic of their history is to have laid waste Arab territory and wrecked the interests of the Arab nation," Fergani wrote in the London-based Arabic language al-Hayat.
"Does the devil become an angel by composing a document which alleges that he desires to do good?"
US officials have repeatedly cited the Arab Human Development reports as independent corroboration for their view that the region's problems stem from internal political and economic stagnation, regardless of US or Israeli policies.
The Greater Middle East Initiative, a draft of which appeared in al-Hayat last week, uses the reports as the starting point for its analysis of the need for reform.
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