Jack Straw today became the first senior minister to breach Labour's "don't mention the war" election edict when he asserted that the invasion of Iraq has helped to spread democracy in the Middle East.

The Foreign Secretary said a combination of factors was at work, including the proliferation of information on the internet and through the Al-Jazeera TV station.

He rejected the notion that Islam was somehow a block on democracy or opposed to it, and cited events in the Palestinian Authority, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia to show how democracy was beginning to spread.

"It's clear that something very important is going on," said Mr Straw.

"It will be for historians to judge - at greater distance and detachment than I can offer - just how much the end of the Saddam regime in Iraq, and the free elections there in January, have contributed to what is now happening.

"But I do not buy the claim that all this has nothing to do with Iraq, or America, or the west, or that, as some seem to be arguing, it could even be the dawn of a new dark age."

Rather than worrying too much what was behind the change, the key question was how to support the growth of democracy in the Arab world, he said.

Mr Straw's remarks, in a speech to the Fabian society, are an attempt to test the political waters on the issue of Iraq, which remains the biggest problem for Labour in the coming election.

Although aides say that Tony Blair wants Labour’s election campaign to focus on the domestic agenda, they regard positive developments in the region as a "potential opportunity" to heal divisions with left-wing opponents of the war.

Mr Straw deliberately stopped short of echoing remarks from President Bush, who has said that it was the removal of Saddam Hussein that had sparked a democratic transformation of the Islamic world. Mr Straw said instead that a combination of factors was at work.

He added that the change was greatly in Britain's interests and in those of the whole international community.

"Reform is urgently needed if the Middle East is to meet the enormous challenges which it faces," he said.

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