The letters came from the Committee on the Present Danger - an international group established to support the war against terror - and carried the imprimatur of such figures as former Secretary of State George Shultz and "Velvet Revolutionary" Vaclav Havel.

One letter invited Egyptian prisoner Ayman Nour, leader of the political opposition party Al Ghad, to join the organization. The other asked President Hosni Mubarak for permission to meet with the jailed leader.

On Saturday, under the mounting international pressure, Mr. Nour was released on bail.

This case represents another small opening in a series of momentous stirrings sweeping a region that has long seemed stuck under entrenched authoritarian regimes.

Why all the ferment? As the Egyptian case suggests, outside influences - in particular Bush policies pairing Arab reform with global security - are at least part of the explanation for the abrupt rise of democracy activism. But so, in a circuitous way, is Osama Bin Laden himself. So is the ripple effect of elections in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Palestinian territories, and Ukraine.

And so, as experts on the region emphasize, are the many home-grown democracy advocates who have long laid the groundwork for an Arab bloom.

"We are witnessing the twilight of the old order. Partly that is because the Arab world is feeling the pressure from outside," says Hassan al-Ebraheem, a former Kuwaiti education minister and longtime advocate of democratic reforms in his and other Arab countries. "But democracy is not made by outside influence," he adds. "To have democracy, you must have democrats."

It is unlikely that the letters to Egypt would have been sent before the terrorist acts of Sept. 11, 2001: Most Arab regimes have long jailed political opponents without much interference from the West. But now a growing roster of international leaders, led by President Bush, is pressing democracy as the best antidote to the kind of Islamic extremism that advocates anti-Western violence.

Responding to that pressure, Mr. Mubarak has directed the parliament to amend electoral law to allow for the first multiparty presidential election in Egypt. It remains unclear, however, just how far-reaching the reform will be: Will the popular Nour, for example, be allowed to mount a candidacy?

More broadly, Mr. Bush has been citing his policies - foremost among them the idea that war in Iraq could plant a democracy to be an example for the region - as a catalyst in what some are calling an Arab spring. In a speech at the National Defense University in Washington last week, the president said, "At last, clearly and suddenly, the thaw has begun."

Various former skeptics, including some Arabs who say they hate to admit it, now say the impact from what Bush calls Iraq's "purple revolution" (referring to the ink-stained thumbs of Iraqi voters) is too obvious to discount. But many experts say it is a combination of two crucial elements - long-frustrated longings meeting unprecedented external support - that is setting things off.

"There is a convergence of internal aspirations and calls for reform in Arab and Muslim lands, with external pressures exerted by the international community, particularly the Bush administration," says Fawaz Gerges, a Mideast expert at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y. "It would be misleading to say it is either/or," he adds, "despite those in the region who really want to believe that it is all springing from Arab soil, or some neoconservatives here who say it is all thanks to the Bush policy."

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