Bush says U.S. will not deal with Hamas

WASHINGTON -- After making democracy a defining marker of American foreign policy, President Bush got a jolting message from Palestinian voters: Be careful what you wish for.\nThe United States promoted the democratic Palestinian election that now has produced an upset victory for the militant Islamic group Hamas. The election could install an organization the United States considers terrorist in place of a Palestinian leadership that, while weak, was pledged to work with Israel and with Washington.\nThe administration is caught between Bush's clarion rhetoric about spreading liberty even in unlikely places and the reality that self-determination can yield results that appear counter to U.S. interests. That's a challenge the United States may have to confront someday in other places as well, including Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Central Asia, the Balkans and -- closer to home -- South America.\nFaced with the fruits of the democratic Palestinian vote he helped nurture, Bush made clear he was displeased.\n"A political party that articulates the destruction of Israel as part of its platform is a party with which we will not deal," he said Thursday, hours after the extent of the Hamas victory came clear.\nHe tried to put a positive spin on the election itself, even as he acknowledged the practical problem it poses for a United States that has tried to play midwife to Israeli peace efforts with Arab neighbors.\n"I like the competition of ideas," Bush told reporters. "I like people that have to go out and say, 'Vote for me and here's what I'm going to do.' There's something healthy about a system that does that."\nAlthough it was obvious Hamas would do well, the landslide outcome stunned the Bush administration, U.S. ally Israel and the old Palestinian leadership that Washington had hoped could bring a new phase in Middle East peacemaking.\nThe administration probably thought elections would strengthen Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, said Hebrew University professor Amnon Cohen.\n"That made sense, but maybe in hindsight it doesn't look so clever," Cohen said by telephone from Israel.\nWashington often cites the election of Abbas as president last year as evidence of a democratic wind blowing in the Middle East after decades of political stagnation under family dynasties and thuggish one-party rule.\nSecretary of State Condoleezza Rice has also pointed to elections in Iraq, Lebanon and Egypt as evidence that "the neighborhood is changing." Rice is careful to add that democracy in the Muslim world will not, and perhaps should not, look like democracy in America.\nStill, the success of religious-based candidates or parties, many of whom are hostile to Bush and opposed to American ideas, is sobering.\nMuslim religious slates did far better in this month's Iraqi parliamentary elections than did the secular candidates preferred by Washington. Empowered by the U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Iraqi Shiite voters could one day tilt their nation toward Iran.\nThe Muslim Brotherhood increased its power in Egypt's parliament nearly sixfold last year. Its lawmakers have tried to ban alcohol and some books, rid state TV of racy music videos and punish violators with 30 lashes.