By Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay, Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Iraqis and Palestinians have voted in free elections. Lebanese have demonstrated peacefully to demand an end to Syrian occupation. In Egypt and Saudi Arabia, long-serving rulers have made modest concessions to democracy.

• Around the world • FDA seeks authority to demand warnings on drug labels • Bush considers incentives for Iran • Suicide bombing kills 116 in Iraq • U.S. report assails other nations over prison abuse Echo Company Knight Ridder Special Report (at philly.com)

 

For President Bush (news - web sites) and his aides, the rapid-fire cascade of events across the Middle East in recent weeks is further proof that their decision to push democracy in the region and make it a top foreign policy goal was the right one.

Yet it's unclear whether the surprising changes coursing through an energy-rich region full of ethnic and religious conflicts will make the United States safer.

Nor is it clear that the United States can steer the events it helped to unleash in a democratic, peaceful direction.

"The big question is how will they manage the process. Is there a strategy to manage what will likely be very tumultuous changes over the next couple of years?" said Peter Khalil, a former official of the U.S. occupation authority in Baghdad, now at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

Senior Bush administration officials acknowledge that they've had a string of good news from the Middle East lately, although they realize that there will be tough work and pitfalls ahead.

The problems could include ethnic strife in places such as Lebanon, which fought a 15-year civil war; a violent backlash against democratization by rulers determined to preserve stability; and the democratic election of Islamist groups that are cool, if not hostile, to the United States.

"The major challenge is to continue to support these winds of change in the Middle East" but not "wind up with a situation in specific countries where the movement brings into power people and groups we'd be very uncomfortable with," said former U.S. Ambassador to Syria Edward Djerejian, now the director of the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.

For Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites), the most immediate concern is Lebanon.

Syrian President Bashar al Assad is hinting that he'll bow to U.S., French and Saudi Arabian demands and withdraw some of Syria's 15,000 troops from Lebanon.

That could lead to a power vacuum or even renewed fighting among Lebanon's polyglot communities, which have little in common except their opposition to Syria's heavy hand.

"It's a country with virtually no national figures. They are all sectarian leaders. How does Lebano