Last weekend our nation crossed a line. On Saturday, a visiting tourist was arrested in Melbourne by the Australian Federal Police, on instructions from the Department of Immigration and ASIO.

His visa has been cancelled and he is to be deported on security grounds.

Who is this threat to our security?

He is not a person with any history of violence. He is not a person who has been known to associate with terrorists. He has not advocated violence against anyone.

Scott Parkin is a peace activist from the United States.

While in Australia on a holiday he has participated in workshops against the Iraq war. He performed some anti-war street theatre outside the Halliburton office when he was in Sydney. Here in Melbourne, he was on his way to conduct a publicly advertised workshop on the Iraq war when he was picked up by our nation's finest.

So subversive were his activities in promoting non-violent action against the Iraq war that he was taken straight to jail (where he is being held at his own expense) and from where he will be taken out of the country.

The only reason given by the authorities is that he represents a security risk. Attorney-General Philip Ruddock confirmed this after Parkin was arrested. There are no breaches of any conditions of his visa. The authorities will not specify the nature of the security threat, and it is possible they know something that definitely justifies action of this nature. But they won't say. The only thing anyone (including Parkin) knows that could constitute that threat is that he has actively - and non-violently - campaigned against the invasion of Iraq.

There is one other thing. In the United States he was charged with a misdemeanour (a minor charge) as a result of participation in a non-violent Greenpeace protest action. If that amounts to a security threat, the Australian authorities should have been well-apprised of it before he entered the country.

It appears that Parkin is being held in jail and deported for being a peace activist. The Government has done nothing to dispel this view. One might expect this sort of thing of Saddam Hussein's regime, but not of a country with democratic principles like our own.

It is our tolerance of a wide range of views that gives our nation so much of its strength. Our ability to hear and open our minds to even radical views makes us stronger - not weaker.

But Parkin's views could scarcely be described as radical. A sizeable proportion of Australia's population - and a sizeable proportion of the US population, for that matter - share his opposition to the Iraq war. Under the present expansive and ill-defined terms "terrorist" and "security threat", ordinary Australians organising or participating in rallies, protests or public meetings could potentially be investigated by ASIO. Can it be that the expression of anti-war views threatens our security so much that such views must be silenced?

The terror laws passed by the Federal Government permit exactly this kind of action by the authorities. They give wide power to ASIO and the AFP to target individuals who engage in industrial and protest action directed towards social change.

It now appears - and the Government has not done anything to dispel this view - that the powers are being exercised against Parkin because he has expressed political views at odds with those of the government of the day. We should not merely be alert about that - we should be alarmed.

Where powers are conferred, there is always the prospect that such powers will be abused. One way to circumscribe the prospect of such abuse is to adopt a charter that guarantees internationally recognised human rights, including freedom of speech. Every other Western nation has done so.

The political process is a non-violent way to resolve conflicting values and interests. By valuing free speech and political participation, civilised societies avoid resort to violent means to resolve conflict. Erosion of our ability to participate in political life exposes us to the risk of violence.

When we violate human rights - such as the right to free speech - we compromise our integrity as a nation, and the very basis of the democracy upon which our national security is founded.

And now our terror laws, and ASIO (which has morphed into a kind of secret police) are being used against those who oppose the policies of the government of the day.

Liberal democracy is built on human rights, including the freedom to vigorously exchange ideas.

Unless Parkin's treatment is a grotesque error, we have stepped over the line separating liberal democracy from more sinister forms of government.

It will remain forever a defining moment of the 21st century, a sentinel marker in an age when so much is quickly forgotten. This was the point at which the vulnerability of the United States of America - economically and militarily the most powerful nation in the world - was exposed. The opening sentence of the subsequent official commission of inquiry captures it precisely: "At 8.46 on the morning of September 11, 2001, the United States became a nation transformed." It was not nuclear weapons or an invading army, but a handful of ideologically warped terrorists engaged in a cowardly war, using means that even the most powerful nation in the world could not defend itself against. At 8.46am, a jetliner carrying thousands of litres of fuel slammed into one of the World Trade Centre twin towers in New York. Seventeen minutes later, a second plane flew into the second tower. Two more aircraft crashed that morning: one into thea Pentagon, another into a field after passengers overcame hijackers, armed with the knowledge that their nation was under attack. The huge twin towers burned then collapsed. Almost 3000 people died directly as a result of the attacks. Four years later, footage showing the first and second planes ploughing into the iconic glass-and-metal towers is no less chilling. These are events etched deep in the global consciousness of the information age.

There had been warnings of catastrophe, notably the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000 and intelligence suggesting al Qaeda was preparing an attack of some sort in the US. Despite the prodigious intelligence-gathering of the US government community, no one had joined the do6ts. After the attacks came introspection. The 585-page report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (better known as the 9/11 Commission) was released last year. It found that no one person or agency was to blame. It recommended refocusing national efforts on combating terrorism in a manner that centralised power and intelligence even further. The report drew praise from the Government but was widely criticised by others, one lcommentator concluding it "offers peace through exculpation, evasion, and entertainment and in doing so dangerously re-energises a national relish for fantasy".

The US engaged in a full-on war on terror that saw it engage and topple the government of Afghanistan, understood to have given succour to the leaders and foot soldiers of al-Qaeda, and then embarked upon a bloody and unfinished war in Iraq, named by US President George Bush as part of an "axis of evil". Australia and Britain have remained staunch allies in this war without borders or battlefields. Much of the rest of the international community, notably the European Union, is wary of the US approach. There have been some dividends. Libya appears to have relinquished its past as an enclave of terrorism, and there has been a push to reform and/ reinvigorate the United Nations.

Australians discovered they were not too remote from terrorism when bombers struck in the popular Indonesian resort island of Bali in October 2002. Of the 202 killed, 88 were Australians. The bombing attack on the Australian embassy in Jakarta one year ago underlined the fact that Australians must be considered targets of terrorist attack. Other attacks in Jakarta, Madrid and most recently in London have shown the struggle against this modern scourge is far from ended. There have been other debits. The climate of suspicion fostered since the September 11 attacks has, almost inevitablyc, led to an erosion of some freedoms.

So four years on from September 11, in a world that is fraught with dangers, what has the superpower learned? The answer to that conundrum may well lie much closer to home. When hurricane Katrina lashed the Gulf states a fortnight ago, America was exposed as vulnerable again. The death toll from this natural disaster will probably far exceed1 that of the September 11 attacks. But it is the Federal Government's response - or more precisely - its shambolic and hopelessly delayed response to Hurricane Katrina, that has caused Americans again to become introspective. Many Americans have been embarrassed and shocked by the depth of the economic and racial divide that has emerged from the chaos of New Orleans and the other affected communities. For a few crucial days in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, far short of saving the world from tyranny, America looked as if it could not care for its own. The National Guard was diminished by the demands of the war in Iraq. Ironically, the Federal Emergency Management Authority - the body charged with the task of managing such crises - had been integrated into the terrorism-focused Department of Homeland Security. The loss of many disillusioned senior FEMA staff arguably left it ill-equipped to cope with the demands of the present crisis. Yesterday, the White House lost faith in the head of FEMA, Michael Brown, effectively sacking him.

Americans will determine whether the billions of dollars spent on the war against terrorism at the expense of other programs have been well spent. But on this day in particular, it is worth remembering how swiftly and irreversibly the world changed on that terrifying day in September 2001, and how America used its economic and political leadership to decisively respond to that event. Had it not, how much more vulnerable to terrorist attack would the world be today? That is almost impossible to answer.

The question is: do the changes to the Crimes Act and the associated anti-terrorism measures announced by the Prime Minister last week suggest a Government that is more alarmed than alert, or are they further evidence of political virtuosos who can spin the community's security concerns into political advantage? The answer is: it is a bit of both. But where alarm and spin combine to constrain personal freedoms without having much impact on the problem - terrorism - the community has reason to worry.

It is clear that the alienated radicals forming the splinter groups within international Islam are a threat to personal and national security, though the level of threat may well be overstated. Random acts of violence, whether remotely triggered explosions or suicide bombers, give people the jitters. Commuters bear the brunt of this unfocused fear, and governments have every reason to strengthen public safety measures on underground trains, the ferries, in bus and rail concourses and at airports. So closed circuit television, facial recognition software, a heightened security presence, improved passenger flow management and security drills are all reasonable, if expensive, responses that most people would support.

Greater intrusion into people's private affairs notwithstanding, the adjustments to the warrant system through which ASIO exercises its surveillance and monitoring powers are also reasonable. That is because that process demands reasonable grounds for the warrant and accountability on the part of the decisionmaker. And, what is of equal importance, the warrants have a termination date, thereby requiring review and re-issue if surveillance is to continue. In my experience, ASIO and successive attorneys-general have handled these matters with care and diligence. Although they might make us bristle at the inexorable march of "Big Brother", these are essentially administrative matters that the community can tolerate.

The proposal that it become an offence to incite violence within the Australian community or violence against our forces deployed overseas probably makes sense, even though the difficulty of proving incitement should not be underestimated. As we saw in the Spycatcher appeal in 1987, the courts take the view that "freedom of speech and disclosure of information (should) not be unnecessarily or unreasonably curtailed". Nonetheless, while a charge of "sedition" would be difficult to uphold, the provision would impose a serious constraint on those who advocate terrorist acts.

Of greater concern are the other proposals for legislative change that significantly increase the powers of government and the bureaucracy to constrain or curtail personal freedoms. Apart from the civil liberty and jurisprudence issues, we need to ask ourselves whether the threat is actually serious enough to warrant these changes, and whether they will be effective anyway.

Serious doubts attach to legislation permitting control orders, preventive detention, notice to produce and the extension of stop, question and search powers. Indeed, such powers, if targeted against the communities that might harbour terrorist sentiments, are more likely to exacerbate the problem than alleviate it.

What these measures fail to grasp is that terrorist cells cannot be eliminated using the traditional tools of legislation and law enforcement. They are not like criminal conspiracies that have structure, leaders, management and bureaucracy. Terrorist cells are ephemeral: they coalesce around specific terrorist operations, then mutate as other opportunities appear. They are opportunistic rather than targeted, which explains why terrorist events cannot be prevented absolutely. What governments, acting co-operatively, must do is to attack the causes and motives of terrorism by addressing the issues that alienate vulnerable communities and generate radicalism.

Australian governments have traditionally shied away from granting what are tantamount to royal commission powers to the police. The scope for abuse is too great. Yet the apparently unlimited scope of the notice to produce "information that will assist with the investigation of terrorism and other serious offences" has the potential to undermine both legal professional privilege and the protection of media sources. Similarly, the preventive detention proposal is far too open-ended, and lacks any sunset provisions that would remove it from the statute books when it is no longer needed. What is more alarming, however, is that these stern measures are unsupported by argument and evidence of threat. Nor is there any analysis of their likely effectiveness. And accountability is totally overlooked. It is here that one might suspect the victory of politics over reason.

Australia will not be more secure by becoming less free: our real defence is the rule of law, inclusiveness and prosperity.

Bush is an idealist and a revolutionary willing to fight for other countries' freedom, writes Peter Hartcher.

In the past 30 years the number of democracies in the world has almost trebled. Of the 192 nations on Earth, 119 of them, or 62 per cent, are now democratic, according to the annual Freedom House Survey. The democratic sphere has enlarged markedly on every continent and in every region of the world bar one - the Middle East.

Thirty years ago, among the 19 countries of the Middle East and North Africa there were three democracies - Israel, Turkey and Lebanon. Today only the first two survive. Of the 16 Arab states of the region, none is a democracy.

Is this stubbornness against the tide of history because of the dominance of Islam? No. There are democracies in Islamic countries elsewhere in the world. The most populous Islamic country on Earth, Indonesia, is now democratic. And outside the Arab world there are 27 countries that have a predominantly Muslim population. Among them, seven have a democratic set-up.

The renowned philosopher Mohamed Abed al-Jabri has said that, nowadays, democracy is the only principle of political legitimacy acceptable in Muslim societies - whatever their religious beliefs and attitudes. This is the same condition that applies in all other countries, too - there is no longer any other source of political legitimacy abroad in the world.

In practice, there are many variations, there are many delays and interruptions and declarations of states of emergency. But in principle, there is no other serious source of political legitimacy.

Most of the autocratic states of the Middle East have Muslim majorities, but they are not ruled by Islamic regimes. On the contrary, most are stridently secular dictatorships. It is not Islam that is somehow vetoing democracy. It is the self-interest of the secular regimes, the autocrats that defend their own power, or, in Churchill's words, are riding tigers they dare not dismount.

Until now, US presidents have been content to live with this stronghold of tyranny in the Middle East in the service of stability. This has been one of the manifestations of the school of realism in US foreign policy.

George Bush reminded us again yesterday in his State of the Union address that he is no realist. He is an idealist and that means he is a revolutionary.

Last month, in his inaugural address, Bush made a case against tyranny that was so powerful and seemed so brimful with purpose that dictators around the world grew concerned: "We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation: the moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right.

"America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies."

And Bush concluded his inaugural address with words that seemed to burst with imminent action: "America, in this young century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world, and to all the inhabitants thereof. Renewed in our strength - tested, but not weary - we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom."

The stridency and imminence implied in these words was so intense that the Bush Administration then had to set about reassuring some of its favourite autocrats that they were not under immediate risk of hostile US action. Vital US allies, including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and the crucial great powers with which Bush has pursued closer relations, China and Russia, were relieved.

Now, in the State of the Union, Bush burned just as brightly with the fire of his democratic revolution, but he was more careful to specify how and where America wants it to catch alight.

Bush was not retreating in any way from his fervour of a few weeks earlier. Indeed, he explained that it was not only in the service of the high ideal of liberty that Bush framed his vision, but also in American national self-interest: "In the long term, the peace we seek will only be achieved by eliminating the conditions that feed radicalism and ideologies of murder," said Bush. "The only force powerful enough to stop the rise of tyranny and terror, and replace hatred with hope, is the force of human freedom."

But this time he differentiated. First, he limited his remarks to the Middle East. Second, he differentiated between friendly states and hostile states.

"To promote peace and stability in the broader Middle East, the United States will work with our friends in the region to fight the common threat of terror, while we encourage a higher standard of freedom."

He spoke of "hopeful reform" in "an arc from Morocco to Jordan to Bahrain". He specifically called on Saudi Arabia and Egypt to make democratic reform.

But Bush was careful to sound intimidating only to unfriendly states, specifically Syria and Iran. He cited these states for harbouring or sponsoring terrorists and promised to confront them.

And, as debate rages inside his Administration about how to deal with Iran's nuclear program, Bush addressed the people of Iran directly: "And to the Iranian people, I say tonight: as you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you."

Implicit in this is the fond hope that the Iranians will rise up in a democratic revolution. In the meantime there are powerful voices in his administration that advocate the urgent armed confrontation of Iran.

The key question, of course, is not the desirability of democracy in the Middle East but the practicalities of how to achieve it. The US has a low rate of success in installing durable democratic regimes - it has had four successes out of 16 attempts in the last century.

In Iraq, the Americans are at the point where the presence of its army serves not to advance democracy but only to discredit it. How? Because to continue as an occupier will only arm America's enemies who argue that the US is not serious about freedom, but only about using the cause of democracy as a Trojan horse for its imperial self-interest.

This argument will gain force if Bush continues to tolerate repression in states like Egypt, which has just arrested Ayman Nour, a key opposition leader and an activist in the cause of a moderate democratic alternative to Hosni Mubarak, the long-ruling autocrat and US ally.

Bush has set himself the great cause of unblocking the autocratic obstacles to the tide of history in the Middle East. He appears to be about to intensify the use of friendly pressure on friendly tyrants and gunpoint democracy on unfriendly ones.

It will be a dangerous and difficult test of American resolve and wisdom.

The US President, George Bush, has made it clear that Washington could not accept a nuclear-armed Iran, which, he said, would be "very destabilising" in the region and beyond.

The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, said in Brussels on Wednesday that Iran should understand that it faced referral to the UN Security Council, where it would face sanctions, unless it accepted proposals put to it by Britain, France and Germany to abandon permanently its uranium enrichment program.

Mr Bush said on Wednesday that Iran had to know that the "free world is working together to send a very clear message: don't develop a nuclear weapon".

"The reason we are sending that message is because Iran with a nuclear weapon would be a very destabilising force in the world," he said at the White House during a meeting with the visiting President of Poland, Aleksander Kwasniewski.

Iran's President, Mohammad Khatami, immediately rejected the suggestion that Tehran was intent on developing nuclear weapons and said it wanted to develop a nuclear program for peaceful purposes only.

"We will never abandon this program," he said. He warned that Iran would end talks with the European three, which resumed in Geneva on Tuesday, if America stayed on the sidelines of the negotiations and issued what he characterised as threats.

Dr Rice, after talks with NATO foreign ministers, urged European negotiators to take a tough line with Iran. Without spelling it out, she seemed to be suggesting the Europeans needed to make it clear to Tehran that unless it took the deal on offer - which would see increased economic aid to Iran together with trade opportunities - UN sanctions would be inevitable.

"I think a diplomatic solution is in our grasp if we have unity of message and unity of purpose," she said. At a news conference, she repeatedly refused to set a time limit on the negotiations and said there was no military option on the table "at this time". "The Iranians know what they need to do. The Iranians have to be held to their international obligations. We haven't set any timetables."

France and Germany have urged the US to join the negotiations with Iran, but Washington has refused, saying US sanctions against Iran have been in place for more than 20 years and it has "dealt itself out" of negotiations, as Mr Bush once put it. In France and Germany, the suspicion is widespread that the US wants more than a halt to Iran's nuclear program; it sees Iran as the main sponsor of terrorism in the world, and wants the regime overthrown.

Iran remains a potential flashpoint because the US is determined that Tehran cannot possess nuclear weapons, but it remains unclear what that determination means. What if these negotiations fail? And what if Russia or China exercises its veto at the Security Council - which seems more than possible - and the move to impose sanctions fails? No one knows.

It is a sign of the despair of the past four years of the intifida that both Israelis and Palestinians liked to tell the following joke. Yasser Arafat (or Ariel Sharon) asks God: "Lord, will there ever be peace in the Middle East?" God answers: "Yes, of course, but not in my lifetime."

Watching the white-haired Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas sitting at the table at Sharm el-Sheikh on Tuesday, pledging to stop killing each other and to seek peace based on the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, may appear to be something of a miracle - a parting of the ocean of blood between Arab and Jew on the shores of the Red Sea. Caution is in order, however.

There have been many false dawns in the Holy Land. I have watched several peace summits in Sharm el-Sheikh that have ended in failure. It was less than two years ago that Abbas and Sharon met at the other end of the Sinai, in Aqaba. Their speeches then were almost identical to their lofty words of peace this week.

Then, as now, Palestinian militants declared a truce. Then, as now, Abbas pledged to end violence and promised to build a democratic Palestinian Authority that would have a monopoly on weapons. But the truce collapsed, the suicide bombers started blowing themselves up once more, Israel halted the political process and Abbas resigned in frustration.

Why should it be any different now? The main reason for hope is that Arafat is history and Sharon wants to make history. Both sides are tired of a conflict that has killed more than 4000 people and set back the cause of peace by more than four years.

The flurry of recent moves towards peace - Israeli withdrawal from West Bank cities, the release of Palestinian prisoners, the imminent return of Egyptian and Jordanian ambassadors to Tel Aviv, and the return of the Bush Administration to active diplomacy in the Middle East - are all the product of Arafat's death.

The main reason for hope is that Arafat is history, and Sharon wants to make history."Abbas won a convincing election victory. He now has a popular mandate to end the Palestinian uprising and no longer has to look over his shoulder at Arafat who, as they say in the Middle East, "spoke out of both sides of his mouth" on the question of violence.

Sharon is also a changed man. Since the ill-fated Aqaba summit, he has caused an earthquake in Israeli politics by forcing through a "unilateral" withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, removing all soldiers and settlers from the territory by next northern summer.

He has brought Shimon Peres' Labour Party back into his coalition. Sharon, the political "father of the settlements", is now planning to use the army to evict thousands of settlers from Gaza, under fire if necessary. The man known by Arabs as the "Butcher of Sabra and Chatila" (because of the massacre of Palestinians during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon that Sharon masterminded as defence minister in 1982) is now embraced by Egypt as the only Israeli statesman who can bring peace.

The death of Arafat and the death of Sharon's dream of "Greater Israel" have removed two large obstacles to peace-making in the Holy Land. But the way to peace could still be blocked by extremists, whether they be Islamic militants seeking a return to the glory of the caliphate or Jewish hardliners convinced that they are bringing about the coming of the Messiah.

Is the ceasefire agreed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad more than just another brief respite? Will settlers plan some new provocation to disrupt the negotiations, as they did with the 1974 disengagement accords, the 1979 Camp David accords and the 1993 Oslo accords?

Will Abbas have the guts to risk a Palestinian civil war to stop militants if they resume attacks? And if he does, will Sharon have the guts to hold back from retaliating? These are just a few of the questions that will be asked in the coming weeks.

There are even bigger uncertainties. Sharon and Abbas seem able to agree on the first steps: ceasefire, normalisation of Palestinian life, Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, creation of a Palestinian mini-state.

Then what? Sharon is giving up Gaza, the part of the occupied territory that Israel finds most difficult to hold on to; but he says nothing about the West Bank, the part that Israel finds hardest to give up. The most difficult issues - the borders of the Palestinian state, the fate of settlements, the status of Jerusalem and the return of Palestinian refugees - are being left to last, like so many ticking bombs.

The international "road map" for peace offers no precise destination. It sets out in great detail the first milestones, but says almost nothing about how it will "end the occupation that began in 1967". While the Palestinians are taking the first steps in the road map by promising to end violence, Israel insists that its own initial obligations - the dismantling of illegal settlement outposts and freezing all settlement building - will be postponed to an indefinite date after the Gaza withdrawal.

For Israelis and Palestinians, "peace" means very different things: Israelis want "security" and an end to conflict, while Palestinians want "justice" and independence. Unless Sharon and Abbas can agree, in secret if necessary, on the kind of final peace they seek to achieve, then any interim steps they take will prove short-lived.

The outside world can help. It can assuage Israel's security fears by providing military observers to ensure that Gaza does not become a terrorist outpost, and it can help Palestinians by offering money and expertise to rebuild their institutions.

George Bush can help both sides by spelling out more of the detail of a permanent peace agreement. He has already backed Sharon by declaring that Israel can retain blocks of settlements in the West Bank and that there will be no "right of return" for Palestinian refugees to Israel. He now needs to support Abbas. He should say that Palestinians have a right to the West Bank, territorial compensation for any land annexed by Israel and a share of Jerusalem, including the Old City.

This is all very similar to the "Clinton parameters" issued in December 2000. Call it the "Bush vision" if need be, but the US President needs to talk about freedom for Palestinians with the same strength as he talks about freedom for Iraqis.

Then maybe, just maybe, God might smile on the Holy Land and bring peace in our lifetime.

Anton La Guardia is diplomatic editor of The Daily Telegraph, London, and author of Holy Land, Unholy War: Israelis and Palestinians.