New York: Warning the Bush administration against "dancing" with dictators, a leading US daily has said Vice President Dick Cheney's recent calls for bringing Democracy to Iraq ring hollow as long as Washington is silent about Pervez Musharraf's "arbitrary rule" in Pakistan.

President George Bush is falling for the illusion that "tyrants" make great allies, the 'New York Times' said in an editorial published on September 1.

"If Bush is not careful, Washington will be mopping up for years from the inevitable foreign policy disasters that come of befriending autocrats who maintain a stranglehold on their own people," it said.

Terrorism, the paper said, will retreat where Democracy advances, not where autocrats muzzle political expression or buy peace at home by financing violence abroad.

"General Musharraf, the Saudis and other autocratic allies like President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt rule repressive societies that become a breeding ground for anti- American hostility."

When Washington preaches Democracy while tolerating the tyranny of allies, America looks double-faced, the paper said. "That's certainly the unflattering picture the world sees today," it stressed.

The paper conceded that when unsavoury governments control strategic locations or resources, the impulse to join hands with them can be "irresistible" and in some cases, there may appear to be no practical alternative.

It would have been much more difficult to dislodge the Taleban and al- Qaida from Afghanistan without the co-operation of Musharraf, the paper said, adding Washington's longstanding ties to Saudi royal family have ensured a steady flow of oil to the West for most of the last 60 years.

"But there is a difference between making alliances of convenience and uncritically working with dictators. Washington should not repeat the mistake it has made so often in the past by muting its support for Democracy and Human Rights in these societies."

Bush, the 'Times' said, has ordered the government to dry up the funding of Islamic terrorism, but Saudi Arabia is the "principal financier" of groups that promote such terrorism.

The White House is pressing the Palestinians to establish Democratic institutions while largely condoning the undemocratic actions of Mubarak, it said while pointing out that a long, unhappy history illustrates the cost of cozying up to dictators.

"America still pays for its blind support of the Shah of Iran. The blank checks Washington wrote to Gen Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan in the 1980's helped nurture what later became al-Qaida," it said.

Decades of "misguided American support" for Gen Suharto in Indonesia and Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire, now Congo, the paper said, left both countries a legacy of debt, violent ethnic conflict and weak institutions.

Stating that Ferdinand Marcos in Philippines was another painful embarrassment, it said the US Administration seems to have learned little from these costly mistakes. "Meeting America's short-term military and diplomatic needs should not require abandoning its Democratic principles."

PTI