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Article: UN highlights uncomfortable truths for Arab world
- Article from:
- The Independent (London, England)
- Article date:
- July 3, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2002 The Independent - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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DEPRIVED OF political freedom, isolated from the world of ideas,
repressing their women, and with science and development stunted, the
Arab world will find it difficult to fault the conclusions of a UN
report which all too accurately sums up the barren, ossified life of
so many Arab countries.
The UN's Arab Development Report was prepared by Arab
intellectuals and partly sponsored by the Arab League, so there is no
way the Arab dictators and oligarchs can pretend to ignore its
findings.
But they will. For although the report does not say so in quite
these words, it is the dead, often cruel, rule of their regimes which
have long used the pretext of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict to ...