Arab reform efforts will fail if they are imposed from outside and fail to address the Middle East conflict, Jordan's King Abdullah II warned in an AFP interview Monday.
The king was speaking before joining a summit of the Group of Eight most industrialised nations in Sea Island, Georgia on Tuesday at which Washington wants to push its own Greater Middle East Initiative for reform in Arab and Muslim countries.
"Any reform process should emerge from within - ownership of the process of reform is vital for its success - and initiatives seen as imposed from the outside will only hurt the efforts of genuine reformers in our region," King Abdullah said.
"Reform cannot be viewed in isolation of the central question looming heavy on the region and that is the Arab-Israeli conflict," he said on the eve of his trip to the United States.
The king insisted that Western efforts to help shore up political and economic reform should not be seen as a blow to Islam.
"Any initiative to help or support the reform process by the international community should not be perceived as a movement against Islam, nor as a clash of civilisations, rather as a coalition of civilisations working for comprehensive development and progress and against ignorance and terrorism," he said.
The king said these are the messages he will carry to the summit, which he will be one of the few Arab leaders to attend along with Bahrain's King Hamad, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and Iraq's first post-Saddam president Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawar.
Washington's plan to push for democratic reform in Arab and Muslim nations from North Africa to Afghanistan has triggered Arab and European criticism and prompted the United States to revise its scheme.
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