Free Thinker

But during his trip to Washington to pick up the award -- his first visit, part of a world tour to speak out on Iran's human rights violations and to collect other prizes, including the World Association of Newspapers' Golden Pen of Freedom -- Ganji stayed as far away from the White House and all U.S. officials as he could, despite intermediaries' overtures.

Bush administration support is dangerous for Middle East democrats these days.

"I was in solitary confinement in prison and had no contact with anyone when Bush announced support for me," Ganji recalled. Interrogators, however, "talked to me as if I had had dinner with Bush the previous evening."

U.S.-backed wars in the Middle East, he added, are not helping democrats in the region.

In a speech at London's Imperial College last month, Ganji warned that Iran's democracy movement does not support military action by either local or foreign forces to produce change. "Violence and force can never by themselves create genuine beliefs," he noted, taking a poke at both Tehran and Washington.

During a conversation in Washington, Ganji reflected: "You people [in the West] have great accomplishments. You brought the world modernity. But no one trusts Western governments now. Many world leaders wanted to meet me. But all the dissidents in Iran asked me not to. This shows the Iranian perception of Western governments."

Ganji, who is married and has two teenage daughters, also scoffs at the $75 million that the Bush administration has allocated for programs to encourage Iran's democracy movement. He said the funds would be better used for Iranian- or Islamic-studies centers at American universities.

Despite the cleric-controlled election last year of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president, Ganji argues that the idea of democracy has greater support today than at any time since Iran's constitutional revolution a century ago. The past year -- a time of growing censorship of the press and popular media, forced retirement of dissident professors, and the arrest of student and labor activists -- has deepened rejection of Tehran's theocracy.

"It's the first time that the elite have a consensus about human rights and democracy," he said. "The regime's biggest weakness is human rights. This is the issue on which it loses face with its people. It's the only point on which we can win."

The movement has so far faltered, he acknowledged, because of disorganization, absence of a strong leader and disparate roots -- left and right, secular and religious, monarchists and republicans, expatriates and insiders.

Ironically, they are the same diverse forces that opposed the shah -- until Ayatollah Khomeini's clerical clique offered the banner of Islam to unify them. Many Iranians now argue that their revolution to end more than 2,500 years of dynastic rule was hijacked.

"We still don't have the emergence of a Gandhi, Havel or Mandela," Ganji said.