World leaders should find answers to conflicts wracking the Middle East before pushing US-sponsored reforms in the region, Arab non-governmental organisations said on Monday.
Speaking ahead of an international gathering of ministers on a US-inspired idea to push its vision of democracy, key speaker Hani Horani told the opening of a two day conference: "Reform is not an alternative to crises."
"We cannot accept reforms at the expense of ignoring the conflicts underway in the region and the appropriate solutions to these conflicts," Horani, of Jordan's Al-Urdun Al-Jadid Research Center, told 300 delegates from Jordan and Arab countries.
The "Parallel Conference For Civil Society For Forum For The Future" precedes a two-day "Forum For the Future" that opens on Thursday, to discuss Washington's Broader Middle East and North Africa (BMENA) initiative adopted at a G8 summit in the United States in June 2004.
Foreign ministers from the G8 group of industrialised nations - Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States - Arab, Muslim and other European countries are expected to attend the forum.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is due to attend the forum on the shores of the Dead Sea where speakers will include British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdel Ilah Khatib will host the event which will also be attended by his counterparts from Bahrain, Sheikh Khaled bin Hamad al-Khalifah, whose country held the forum in 2005, and Iraq and Egypt.
Bakhtiar Amin, a former Iraqi human rights minister, told the counter-forum conference that "practical solutions" must be found to eradicate "problems and rampant violence in the region".
"The list of problems facing our region is long and numerous. It begins with poverty and unemployment and there are problems facing freedom of expression, judicial shortcomings, in addition to the deadly conflicts in Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon," Amin said.
Ezzedin al-Asbahi, who heads a human rights center in Yemen, called for representatives of non-government organisatons to be allowed to take part in the ministerial forum "in order to make their voices heard".
They should be allowed to say that "democracy is suffering and facing threats from the wars rattling Somalia, Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq," he said.
Abdulnabi al-Akri, coordinator of the NGO event, said the conference would submit recommendations to the ministerial forum. "We have things to say and our own agenda, and we are opposed to American policies," Akri said.
Jordanian opposition parties, including Islamists, trade unions, human rights and women empowerment groups will hold their own counter-forum conference on Friday in Amman after the authorities lifted a ban against them.
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