WASHINGTON – America’s ability to promote liberal democrats abroad is coming under attack by authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes all over the world, according to a new study from the National Endowment for Democracy to be released next week.

The assessment from the organization outlines a threat to the pledges of President Bush, who in his 2005 inaugural address said the spread of freedom would be a top priority for his second administration.

In the last two months, however, the White House has offered to join discussions with Iran on its nuclear program, fully normalized relations with Libya, and met with the son of Egypt’s president, Gemal Mubarak, as a third of Egypt’s judges were publicly dissenting from the regime to investigate cases of fraud in last November’s elections.

The report, titled “The Backlash Against Democracy Assistance,” to be released on Thursday to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, warns, “foreign governments’ efforts to impede democracy assistance – from legal constraints on NGOs to extra legal forms of harassment – have recently intensified and now seriously impede democracy assistance in a number of states.”

It goes on to say, “regimes are adopting pro-active approaches, channeling funds to anti-democratic forces and using ersatz NGOs to frustrate genuine democratization.”

The warning from the endowment, America’s umbrella organization that disburses grants to foreign organizations agitating for the rule of law, elections, and other facets of open societies, comes after a scholar who had been associated with the group, Ramin Jahanbegloo, was arrested in Iran on alleged charges of espionage.

In Caracas, a similar prosecution looms over Sumate, an organization that also received funding from NED, in part for its work to organize a referendum on the presidency of Hugo Chavez. Meanwhile American democracy promotion organizations in Uzbekistan have been expelled from the country, and in Russia there is a new initiative to nationalize the civil society organizations America has helped fund since the 1990s.

“If this trend continues in these countries, it will have a chilling effect on the ability of civil society groups to organize and make their views known,” a vice president of the endowment, David Lowe, said. Mr. Lowe said he was particularly concerned about developments in Egypt, Russia, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe, countries he described as a “a new class of semi-authoritarian regimes that have the trappings of democracy such as elections, but lack the essential principles of liberal democracy.”

The National Endowment for Democracy was created in 1983 through an act of Congress that envisioned a grant making organization to help foreign liberals to fight for free and fair elections and other facets of liberal democracy in closed societies. Originally this kind of work was carried out by the CIA in the first three decades of the Cold War, but by the early 1980s pluralities in both parties agreed that this support should be relegated to a separate foundation with transparent funding partnered with the two main American political parties and the country’s largest labor union, the AFL-CIO. The endowment received $74 million from Congress for the 2006 fiscal year in addition to more specific grants for regions and countries.

One of the recommendations of the new report is that the members of the Community of Democracies, founded in 1999, renew their commitment to democracy assistance and reassess the membership of that organization, which includes Egypt, Russia, and Venezuela. The Community of Democracies was originally an initiative of President Clinton’s last secretary of state, Madeleine Albright. At the 1999 Warsaw conference she called for a new solidarity to protect and promote liberals still struggling under dictatorships.

Some critics in the last year have said the strain on American democracy promotion, particularly in the Middle East, can be traced back to the region’s disapproval of the American-led war to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003.The president of the endowment yesterday rejected this argument. “I think there is a fundamental tension between regimes and these NGOs that they do not control,” Carl Gershman said. He added that after the successful nonviolent campaign to reverse the fixed presidential election in Ukraine in 2004, known as the Orange Revolution, a reaction from the world’s authoritarian states was almost inevitable. The reaction has taken the form of increased bureaucratic hurdles for groups organizing political campaigns in places like Egypt. Meanwhile, American democracy promoters in Belarus and Russia have been harassed and in some cases kicked out of the country.

Mr. Gershman said he was concerned about the new tactics of the authoritarian and semi-authoritarian states, but he did not despair. “This means we have to adapt. But we’ve faced bigger problems than this.” In the interview yesterday he also acknowledged that some pro-democracy activists he has spoken with are concerned that the Bush administration has dropped its democracy promotion agenda. “I think the commitment from the administration is still there,” he said.