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Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6733212/site/newsweek/
Reform in the Arab World
(Newsweek) Fareed Zakaria - Consider the contrast between two conferences on reform held recently. The first, the official Forum for the Future held in Morocco, ended with the foreign ministers of the region endorsing reform, but adding that it couldn't happen until the establishment of a Palestinian state. "Until foreign-policy problems are solved," the governments seem to be saying, "we have no choice but to keep punishing our people." But at Dubai's Arab Strategy Forum a few days later, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, Dubai's ruler, said pointedly, "I cannot see why a crisis, no matter how severe, should delay economic reform or plans to eradicate illiteracy." "What is the relation," he asked, "between foreign affairs and corruption?" These voices are mainly being heard from the Persian Gulf, which has now become the center of reform in the Arab world.