`Moderately repressive' leaders merit carrots, sticks.

Byline: Kevin Cape' For The Register-Guard

TUNIS - There is something magical about the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The languid days, with their fasting - not even a glass of water for the most faithful - give way to evening celebrations whose festiveness is the antidote to the day's privations.

Along the Avenue Habib Bourguiba, Tunis's most famous street, the colored lights in the trees beam down on the crowds buying honey-soaked sweets and the raucous outdoor cafes where tea provides a strangely intoxicating substitute for forbidden alcohol.

Arab friendliness - a much underrated quality in the West - is at a zenith, as even foreign infidels like myself are offered tea and cakes by insistent strangers. This year, Ramadan goes through mid-October, after which those with the time and money will go on the haj, the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, which believers are meant to do at least once in their lifetimes.

Much is made of the inevitable "clash of civilizations" between the West and the Islamic world, particularly in America, but Tunisia is probably about the last place such an unhappy development would ever occur.

Similarly, Washington frets over America's bad image in the Arab world, and yet the negative attitude toward the U.S. government - not individual Americans - is really only due to two things: The first is Washington's backing for Israel, which is not likely to change; but the more important factor is the war in Iraq, which certainly will wind down after the Bush administration leaves office.

In fact, there is widespread admiration here for American popular culture, the movies and the music, and still a sense of the United States as a land of opportunity.

My guess is that if we lived in a world of open frontiers, millions of Arabs would come to the United States seeking the economic opportunity conspicuously absent in many of their countries.

Tunisia has been an oasis of stability, with only two leaders since its independence from France in 1956. The first was Habib Bourguiba, who ruled until 1987 when he was quietly deposed by Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

After Ramadan fades away, Tunis is bound to be the scene of celebrations - some spontaneous, others with the spontaneity of old Soviet rallies - expressing the nation's gratitude to Ben Ali.

The president's supporters do have a strong case to make.

Tunisia's economy has been skillfully managed, the educational system has expanded impressively, and foreign investment has been considerable.

Besides, Tunisia lacks the grinding poverty one sees in the Moroccan countryside, and the chaos and corruption of what should be a much richer Algeria.

There is one chink in Ben Ali's armor, however.

Like many of his fellow Arab leaders, the Tunisian president does not tolerate political opposition.

There are, for example, no opposition members of parliament, and Ben Ali even closed down the only headquarters in Tunis of the Democratic Progressive Party, which has a mild program of political reform. This, in turn, prompted two opposition leaders to go on a hunger strike.

Given the stability of this country in a potentially unsettled Maghreb, European and American leaders have tiptoed around the issue of Ben Ali's authoritarianism. There are a few bland calls for greater dialogue with the opposition from time to time, but these are delivered with a wink and a nod.

Ben Ali is the model of what the late U.N. ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick once called a "moderately repressive" leader that the West should support. That was in the Cold War days, when Kirkpatrick felt that Washington should tacitly condone authoritarian regimes, if the alternative was Communism.

Today in the Arab world - though probably not in Tunisia - the alternative is more likely to be a fundamentalist Islamic regime.

While I personally believe that Ben Ali probably does deserve Western support, we certainly could be more forthright in urging him to lighten up on the opposition, and to permit at least a few token opposition deputies in his rubber-stamp parliament.

In the medina, the historic market quarter with its wonderful stalls of old books and overwhelming scent of perfume, photos of the rais, or leader, greeted me at every turn. Welcoming cries were shouted out in Arabic or French, smiles everywhere, with the magic broken only by the occasional merchant who would try to drag me into his shop. Fortunately, my insistence on my wretched poverty generally quieted the merchant's ardor to ply me with tea and rugs.

Suddenly a man gestured to one of the omnipresent photos of Ben Ali, asking me in French what I thought of "our wonderful president." Perhaps under the effect of too much tea, I shouted expansively that Ben Ali was obviously a great man, while hoping silently that he is not a regular reader of The Register-Guard.

Eugene native Kevin Cape' is a writer and teacher living in Paris.