Kuwait said on Tuesday it backed political reform in the Middle East but any changes should be home-grown, in an apparent rebuff to Washington's "Greater Middle East Initiative".
The initiative calls for internal reforms by Middle Eastern states, where Washington says lack of democracy has fostered Islamic militancy. It has been dismissed by Arab states for failing to mention the Arab-Israeli conflict, which they say is at the heart of the region's problems.
"We believe reforms are necessary and that these reforms should stem from the people and from within the regimes, but they cannot be imposed from outside," Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah told reporters at parliament.
Arab heavyweights Egypt and Saudi Arabia have rejected the US plan, and reactions across the Arab world have been overwhelmingly hostile.
On Tuesday, Sabah said he had met a US congressional delegation and discussed the issue.
"The talks were interesting regarding the reforms that they want to present," the prime minister told reporters. "I told them: 'Don't impose them on us and on the people, because all the people will reject them'."
He said the American plan was likely to be discussed at an coming Arab summit in Tunisia.
Kuwait was the launchpad for the US-led war in Iraq last year, which ousted Saddam Hussein, and the oil-rich state was recently declared by Washington to be a key non-Nato ally.
Asked if there were plans to reform the Arab League, Sheikh Sabah said that there were several separate Arab initiatives that would be consolidated into one and presented at the summit. "And there is a Kuwaiti point of view," he added.
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