Blair Admits West’s Failure in Region, Threatens of Islamic Organized Movements
Former United Kingdom's Prime Minister Tony Blair urged "the west to more help liberal and democratic elements in the Middle East and North Africa following the Arab spring."
Blair, the special envoy for the Quartet on the Middle East, regretted in an interview with BBC "west's previous failures to promote a concept of evolutionary change."
Claiming that the "the region is facing the risk of forming new Islamist governments that are not genuine democracies," Blair admitted that "countries such as Britain and the US had previously been too reluctant to push dictatorships on a path to democracy."
The former prime minister added that "the trouble really in the region is that religious and extreme elements are very well organized while the liberal and democratic types basically aren't."
Considering that "the recent revolutions would cause quite a lot of difficulty," the UK official said "there was a battle between competing elements in the Middle East as to what constitutes democracy."
"Then you have got this Islamist movement, in the Muslim Brotherhood, which is very well organized, and where frankly, it is not clear that they want the same things as us and it is not clear that the type of democracy they would create would be a genuine democracy," Blair said.
Source: BBC, Edited by moqawama.org
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