September 12, 2003	Friday	Rajab 14, 1424

WASHINGTON: Two years after the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the US public favours a distinctly less unilateral strategy than the one pursued by President George W. Bush, found a major new poll released on Tuesday.

Some 81 per cent of more than 1,200 respondents told pollsters from the University of Maryland’s Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) that working “more closely” with other countries was a key lesson learned from Sept 11, as opposed to Washington acting “on its own more” to fight terrorism.

Strong majorities also called for the administration to pursue “more cooperative approaches” with other nations and rely more on economic aid and diplomacy to fight terrorism and less on military means, according to the survey, conducted by California- based Knowledge Networks between Aug 26 and Sept 3.

The poll was released by PIPA, which has tracked US public opinion on foreign policy for some 15 years, on the eve of the second anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks and just as the Bush administration appears to have begun canvassing for support at the United Nations for greater international participation in peace-keeping and reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

The administration, which had insisted on going to war in March without authorization from the UN Security Council, has concluded that it must now return to the Council in order to persuade other countries to send troops and other forms of assistance.

In a nationally televised address on Sunday, Bush said other countries had a “duty” to provide help and, at the same time, announced that his administration needed some $87 billion in emergency aid over the next 13 months to sustain US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The total, which shocked even Bush’s fellow Republicans in Congress worried about Washington’s exploding budget deficit, was more than twice what had previously been estimated and assumes that other countries will contribute some 30 billion additional dollars to the effort.

Some commentators have said that the administration’s new approach to the UN constitutes an implicit admission that the unilateralism with which it pursued the war is no longer tenable.

If so, the administration may be moving toward the mainstream of US public opinion, which has long called for a more multilateral approach to its “war on terrorism” and in Iraq.

If anything, according to the poll, which asked the randomly chosen respondents more than 60 in-depth questions, the public’s embrace of multilateralism appears to have deepened.

Asked which was the “more important lesson of September 11”, 81 per cent of respondents chose “the US needs to work more closely with other countries” instead of “the US needs to act on its own more to fight terrorism”, with which 16 per cent of respondents agreed.

In June 2002, the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (CCFR) asked the same question in its own comprehensive survey. At that time, 61 per cent of respondents agreed with the first alternative and 34 per cent chose the more unilateralist approach.

While the new poll found that about two-thirds of respondents approved of Bush’s anti-terrorist efforts in a general sense, they were more critical of specific policies, according to Steven Kull, PIPA’s director, who attributed the relatively high approval ratings to the residue of a “rally-round-the-president effect” that dates from Sept 11.

Some 54 per cent of respondents said the administration has been “too assertive” in relation to other countries, while 58 per cent called on the administration to put “more emphasis on diplomatic and economic methods” in dealing with threats in the Muslim world, as opposed to “military methods”.

In what Kull said was “the most dramatic finding”, the survey found that 76 per cent of the public said they feel no safer from the threat of terrorism now than they did in the immediate aftermath of Sept 11. Only 24 per cent said they felt safer.

On the other hand, asked whether the administration’s efforts over the past two years at reducing the risk of a terrorist act had made them feel safer, 46 per cent agreed. In response to that question, 53 per cent said they felt no safer.

At the same time, a very strong majority — nearly 80 per cent — said they believed that US policy in the Muslim world is creating conditions that make it easier for terrorist groups to grow there.

Two-thirds of respondents said they thought feelings by Muslims against US policy had worsened over the last two years, while 60 per cent said they thought “a majority of people in the Muslim world think US policies in the Middle East make the region less stable”. Only 35 per cent disagreed, insisting that most Muslims overseas think US policies enhance Middle Eastern stability.

Perhaps most striking, almost three-quarters of respondents assume that the majority of overseas Muslims “share many of Al Qaeda’s feelings toward the US”, even if most of those who have a similar perspective do not support their methods.

Two-thirds of respondents also said they believe that most people in the Middle East want Washington “to play a less prominent and influential role” in th the region and reduce its military presence there.

A similar majority agreed that the US military presence in the region increases the likelihood of terrorist attacks against the country, and that it indeed should be reduced over the next decade. By contrast, 32 per cent and 31 per cent, respectively, said the US military presence reduces the chances of a terrorist attack and that its military profile there should be increased.

In a rebuke to the administration’s plans to reform the Middle East, unilaterally if necessary, some 58 per cent of respondents agreed that, “the US is playing the role of world policeman in the Middle East more than it should”. Thirty-nine per cent disagreed.

A majority of the public rejects the view that tensions between the West and the Muslim world are inevitable, although the proportion of individuals who take that view has increased over the past two years.

While 36 per cent agreed with the assertion, “because Islamic religious and social traditions are intolerant and fundamentally incompatible with Western culture, violent conflict is bound to keep happening”, that marked an increase from 26 per cent when PIPA asked the same question in Nov 2001.

Similarly, 60 per cent of respondents insisted that Muslims generally “have needs and wants like those of people everywhere, so it is possible for us to find common ground.”

But close to 80 per cent of respondents said Washington should make greater efforts to improve relations with people in the Muslim world.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.