Cheney praises Kuwait over women's suffrage

Elizabeth L. Cheney, American deputy assistant secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, who is on a state visit to Kuwait, opened up to the media yesterday on a range of topics from women's political rights in the region to the presidential elections in Iran.

Cheney, daughter of US Vice-President Dick Cheney, who is also the Coordinator for Broader Middle East, North Africa Initiative, was talking to the media at the residence of Kuwaiti women's rights activist Rola Dashti.

The accomplishment of achieving the right to vote is a model for women across the world, Cheney said in reference to the recent tectonic shifts in Kuwait's political landscape.

Cheney described Kuwait's first woman minister Massouma Al Mubarak, whom she met earlier in the day, as a "person with a tremendous sense of what has to be done, so that the women of Kuwait can exercise their rights and begin to organise the campaign and run for office".

"We are working on a whole range of issues. The empowerment of women is a very important one. When Secretary [of State Condoleezza] Rice made her speech in Cairo last week, she quoted the Kuwaiti women saying: Half democracy is not democracy. This is the message that has gone all around the world from women in Kuwait.

"At the same time economic reform is very important such as opening up of economies and diversifying economies to create jobs for young people," she added.

Cheney stressed that political reform should go beyond women's empowerment and address issues such as freedom of assembly, freedom of press and speech, "which are very fundamental to an open political system".

Asked about the controversial subject of American intervention in the school curricula in the Gulf region, she said "that is a mistake in understanding".

Cheney was critical of the Iranian elections, saying "it doesn't reflect the will of the Iranian people. It wasn't a free election, in which over 1,000 candidates were denied the right to run for election, including all the women. There were 94 women, and not a single woman was allowed to run."