Fergani said the US had asked for introducing changes to the 2004 report “but now they are trying to suppress it completely.”

CAIRO, December 19 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Unhappy with reference to its practices in Iraq and the Israeli aggressions in Palestine, the Bush administration threatened to cut off funds to the UN Development Program (UNDP) if its report on reform in the Arab world is released.

Nadir Fergani, the author of the UN report on freedom and governance in the Arab world, told Reuters on Saturday, December 18, Washington had already punished the UNDP by withholding 12 million dollars as it did not like the previous report.

“My understanding is that this time they are threatening a much heavier penalty - the entire US contribution to the UNDP budget, or $100 million.”

The US was irked by parts of the new report critical of its practices in Iraq and Israeli aggressions in the occupied Palestinian territories, said Fergani, an Egyptian social scientist, co-wrote the last three Arab Human Development Reports.

One diplomat told Reuters, on condition of anonymity, that parts of the new report say the Iraq war and the Israeli practices had made it more difficult for Arab countries to carry out government reforms.

Arab countries that participated in the US-sponsored Forum for the Future, which was recently hosted by Morocco, dodged, at least for now, western pressure for reforms by linking the process to the settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict, to the dissatisfaction of Washington.

Ironic

Fergani said the US manipulating the 2002 report to give credibility to its reform recipe for the Arab world.

Fergani said the US practices, especially in Iraq, run counter to its rhetorical slogans of freedom.

“For example, the United States is suppressing the two national liberation movements in the Arab world - in Iraq and in Palestine,” he said.

The US came under heavy fire after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal was first revealed by the American press.

Major General Antonio Taguba said in a damning report that he found evidence of "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuse"  at the notorious prison.

Fergani said the US had asked for introducing changes to the 2004 report “but now they are trying to suppress it completely.”

He said that some parts of the report, which cost the UNDP about $700,000, are being rewritten after Washington and some Arab governments raised concerns over parts of the report.

Fergani recalled that the US used the 2002 Arab Human Development Report as the basis to draw up its reform proposals in the Arab countries but after manipulating the report to give credibility to its ideas.

The previous reports said that Arab countries suffer a lack of freedom, repression of women and isolation from the world at large that stifled creativity as well as economic growth and development.

Egypt's Objection

The Egyptian government also expressed objection to parts of the report calling for freedom of expression and association in the Arab world, Fergani said.

UNDP spokesman William Orme admitted that both Washington and the Egyptian government voiced concern over various parts of the report.

He stressed that both parties had based their comments on the early report drafts that had been discarded or revised.

However, a spokesman in the Egyptian mission to the United Nations declined to comment on the matter.

A spokeswoman for the UNDP office in Cairo also refused to comment on Fergani's remarks.

US officials, for their part, denied reports of trying to delay or kill the report, prepared by  about 100 specialists in the Arab world.