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03/11/2005:

"U.N. Aide Chides Bush on Democracy Campaign"

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's top aide said on Thursday that he slightly resented the suggestion that "somehow democracy is President Bush's invention."

"I kind of think there are 42 other American presidents who might resent that as well," Mark Malloch Brown, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's chief of staff, told a news conference. "Democracy has a lot longer roots and a lot more friends than just the current campaign of President Bush."

The comments came during a daylong conference on "the state of democracy in the world," organized by the Community of Democracies, a fledgling group of about 100 nations founded in June 2000 in Warsaw to promote democratic government.

The meeting was also meant to firm up plans for the community's next meeting, an April 28-30 ministerial-level conference in Santiago.

Malloch Brown, who is also the U.N. Development Program administrator, said he did "slightly resent this question that somehow democracy is President Bush's invention."

Chilean officials preparing for the Santiago conference also took what appeared to be a swipe at U.S. policy, although they denied it was aimed at Washington.

They said democracy cannot be imposed from outside and is best promoted by many nations, not one.

"We must also remember that democracy develops from within the people," Chilean Vice President Jose Miguel Insulza told the gathering.
Full Article:news.yahoo.com

The kind of democracy that 'develops from within the people' is just the sort of thing that the US has brutally repressed over the past 60 years. PS: Where has Lebanon gone? It seems to have dropped out of the news.