A semi-official US religious freedom watchdog heavily criticized Saudi Arabia, Iran and Egypt for discrimination and again recommended threatening the Saudi government with sanctions unless its record improves.
The US Commission on International Religious Freedom identified the three Middle Eastern countries as the region's prime violators of the right to worship and called for Washington to increase pressure on them, particularly Saudi Arabia, to change.
"The government of Saudi Arabia engages in systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, or belief," the congressionally mandated panel said in its annual report.
"The commission continues to recommend that Saudi Arabia be designated a 'country of particular concern,' or CPC," it said, noting with apparent disdain the refusal of the State Department to make such a designation which would open Riyadh to possible US sanctions.
The panel's report is intended to guide the secretary of state in making his or her determinations on the status of freedom of religion around the globe.
Despite repeated recommendations to include Saudi Arabia as a country of particular concern," Secretary of State Colin Powell has declined to do so, in what critics have complained is political pandering to the oil-rich US ally.
"While the State Department's 2003 Annual Report on International Religious Freedom again notes that freedom of religion 'does not exist' in Saudi Arabia, the country still has not been designated a CPC," the commission said.
The panel accused the Saudi government of engaging "in an array of severe violations of human rights as part of its official repression of freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief" and noted with concern that the country continued to export an extreme form of militant Islam despite pledges to rein in radical, anti-western imams.
"The sponsorship by a close ally of the United States around the world of extremist intolerant religious views or views that incite to violence seems to be something that the American people must know more about," Michael Young, the commission's chairman, told reporters.
Iran has been designated a "country of particular concern" for abuses of religious freedom since 1999, and the panel once again recommended that it be identified as such.
"The government of Iran engages in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom, including prolonged detention, torture, and executions based primarily or entirely upon the religion of the accused," the commission said.
In particular, it noted continued persecution by the Islamic republic's conservative Shiite religious leadership of the members of the Baha'i faith as well as discrimination against Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians in addition to minority Sunni and Sufi Muslims.
The commission did not recommend that Egypt be designated a "country of particular concern" but singled it out for careful scrutiny with an eye to such a move, accusing Cairo of not doing enough to prevent religious repression.
"Serious problems of discrimination and other human rights violations against members of religious minorities remain widespread in Egypt," the panel said, adding that the country would remain on its "watch list" for possible inclusion on the religious freedom blacklist.
In Egypt, it said, Coptic Christians, Baha'is and Jews continue to be discriminated against and have been subject to violence at the hands of Muslim extremists who have gone unpunished for their crimes. Also of concern, are prosecutions of Christians for proselytizing and the arrests or harassment of Muslims who have converted, it said.