May 1, 2003	Thursday	Safar 28, 1424

WASHINGTON: If the unilateralist hawks in the administration of President George W. Bush were hoping that the easier than expected military victory in Iraq would bring the US public closer to their views, they are likely to be very disappointed by the latest polling.

It shows that much of the public appears to be more in tune with the views of “Old Europe” than with those of the neo-conservatives around Rumsfeld.

While three in four US adults say they now believe the war was right, according to the most comprehensive poll to date, strong majorities reject either a more unilateralist or military-oriented role for the United States in the future and continue to see the United Nations as the best mechanism for dealing with international crises.

Moreover, almost two-thirds of a random survey of adults agreed with the assertion, “The US plays the role of world policeman more than it should”, and only 12 per cent agreed with the notion that, “The US should continue to be the pre-eminent world leader in solving international problems”.

The survey, carried out Apr. 18-22 with 865 randomly chosen respondents by the Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland, largely echoes the findings of other recent but far less comprehensive polls by the Gallup organisation, Newsweek and other media companies.

“Despite the US victory in Iraq,” he said, “public opinion appears to have remained unchanged with regard to the use of military force, the UN, and the role of the US in the world,” Kull told a news conference here.

Most striking appears to be the degree to which the public rejects the kind of international role that neo-conservatives hawks in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney’s office have proposed for the United States, in which it is not constrained by international mechanisms like the UN Security Council or alliances from taking unilateral action when it deems necessary.

When asked to choose among three options to describe the role Washington should play in the world, only 12 per cent favoured the pre-eminent world leader position; 76 per cent said “The US should do its share in efforts to solve international problems with other countries”; while 11 per cent said Washington should ”withdraw from most efforts to solve international problems”.

The percentage favouring the “pre-eminent” role actually fell from 17 per cent since a similar question was asked in a poll taken in June 2002.

Even more unexpected was the response to the question of whether the administration should have tried to get Security Council authorisation for taking military action against Iraq, a notion with which administration hawks strongly disagreed. Eighty-eight per cent of respondents chose the UN route.

“You talk to people in Washington and you wouldn’t expect this at all,” noted I.M. Destler, a foreign policy specialist at the University of Maryland. “It’s such a high percentage, especially when you consider how the UN process has been exposed to so many attacks by the administration and in the media,” he told reporters.

Similarly, while 35 per cent of respondents said Washington should feel “more free to use force without UN authorisation in the future, almost two-thirds said the United States should not take away that lesson.

The notion that the Iraq attack was regarded as an exceptional case was bolstered when the survey asked what Washington should do when dealing with other potential US targets that allegedly harbour weapons of mass destruction, the pretext on which the administration justified its invasion.

Solid majorities of respondents — from 57 per cent to 67 per cent — said the UN, rather than Washington, should take the lead in dealing with perceived threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea.—Dawn/InterPress News Service.