Carlos Fuentes; A 'Community Of Interests'.(Interview)

Byline: Scott Johnson

Carlos Fuentes is an accomplished Mexican novelist, journalist and essayist. He has spent many years in Europe, serving as Mexico's ambassador to France from 1974 to 1977. He's also been a teacher and fellow at various universities in the United States, including Columbia, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania. NEWSWEEK's Scott Johnson spoke with Fuentes about the impact of the American presidential election. Excerpts:

JOHNSON: Given the violence and turmoil in Iraq, the military option doesn't look like a feasible way to reform the Middle East. What should the United States and Europe do to promote reform?

FUENTES: Go back to the Clinton priorities. Clinton had a very clear priority--first, the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Go to the heart of that problem because that is the biggest problem in the Middle East. The second priority [must be] terrorism and Al Qaeda. Bush shunned the real priorities and went to a nonissue, which was Saddam, Iraq, overthrowing a dictatorship, weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. How many dictatorships can you overthrow? Then, the third priority [must be] bringing democracy to the Middle East. In Mexico, we had 70 years of a one-party, one-power system. The United States lived with that system very comfortably. It took us 70 years to reach democracy. How long is it going to take the countries of the Middle East, with their own traditions, their own ethnic and religious conflicts, to achieve democratic status? It will have to be up to them. It cannot be imposed on them from abroad.

Can Iraq be fixed?

The U.S. should gather the international community at a table and find a way of extricating itself from Iraq without losing face--or else stay in Iraq, but with the cooperation of the international community and the United Nations. [That might] create possibilities for development and democracy in Iraq, which the present situation of insurgency against the foreign occupation will not assure.

The United States and some of Europe's major powers have had a falling out over America's unilateralist foreign policy. Does U.S. credibility depend on things like the Kyoto accords or the World Court?