Around the world a movement is underway to hold former leaders accountable for their past misdeeds. This drive not only has the capacity to make degraded people feel a rejuvenated sense that justice prevails but to lay the foundations for a new global political morality. PNS commentator Rami Khouri, former editor of the Jordan Times, is a noted author and analyst of Mideast affairs.

AMMAN, JORDAN -- Something remarkable is happening around the world: Former government officials -- some elected, others self-appointed -- are being held responsible for their past actions. In some cases, they are being prosecuted and jailed.

The Arab world and Israel are not totally exempt from this trend, but their actions so far are neither effective nor credible. Nevertheless in Amman a recent two-day seminar on corruption was a small indicator that the global trend operates here too. Much more impressive was Kuwait's decision last month to try a senior prince and former oil minister for alleged corruption. Israel is now investigating its own army's killing of Egyptian prisoners-of-war decades ago -- a litmus test of Israeli state morality in the eyes of many Arabs.

Putting former officials and leaders on trial is a tricky business, one that can easily fall victim to trendy politics, exaggerated emotions, personal pique. Yet it is important to explore the wider implications of holding former officials accountable for their deeds, especially in the Middle East where the past is so pervasive, so powerful, so haunting for Arabs and Israelis alike.

The worldwide accountability drive is impressive in both its scope and intensity:

* The main opposition party in Mexico has formally charged former Mexican president Carlos Salinas with treason and fraud in connection with the 1990 privatization of the state-owned telephone company.

* In South Africa, former defense minister General Magnus Malan and 19 others have been formally charged with murdering over a dozen people in 1987 while a Truth and Reconciliation commission headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu has started investigating charges of death, torture and other abuses under the 34-year-long apartheid regime.

* In Spain, a Senate committee has started hearing witnesses in its probe of allegations that the government, including Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez, conducted a "dirty war" of assassinations against Basque separatists in the mid-1980s.

* In South Korea, former presidents Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo are in jail or have been formally charged with alleged offenses committed in the 1980s, including illegally accepting bribes from businesses, taking power by military coup and massacring civilians.

* In Kuwait, senior prince and former oil minister Sheikh Ali Khalifah al Sabah is being referred to a special court established to try former ministers, where he will stand trial for allegedly making illegal personal profits from deals related to the national oil tanker company.

* In Italy, former prime minister Giullio Andreotti is on trial for assorted charges of financial and political misconduct and for allegedly doing secret deals with the mafia.

Why are these cases and others like them significant? First, they emphasize the importance of the concept of accountability and trust in public life, the idea that public servants are there to serve the people, not to enrich themselves. Second, trials of former officials charged with abuse of power emphasize the new sense of self-respect and dignity citizens now feel. Long demeaned and degraded, they now insist on being treated as intelligent human beings rather than simpletons or sheep.

The process itself, of course, must be carried out in a manner that affirms justice, trust and fairness so that these values can form the platform from which new leaders and refreshed societies work together for a better future. The biggest test of any country is not how well it can build roads or schools, or administer bureaucracies or operate parliaments, but how well it can administer a system of justice that is credible to its own people.

Justice is merely the collective expression of an individual's sense of self-worth and integrity. There is justice in the land when individuals feel they can have their day in court, when they have means of expressing their own ideas, when their desires and rights are carefully considered by those who wield power.

For decades, abuse of power, public theft, corruption and unprovoked violence by the state were widely tolerated as necessary evils to win the Cold War. Today such degradations are deemed unacceptable, and we are witnessing a worldwide backlash against misdeeds and grievances of the recent past.

Is it possible that the worldwide accountability movement could emerge as the new foundation for a universal political morality that is truly impartial? Let us hope so and keep watching, in the deserts as in the mountains and cities.