October 3, 2003	Friday	Sha’aban 6, 1424

CAIRO, Oct 2: Arab pundits said here on Thursday that the US government must revise its entire policy toward the Middle East if it wants to improve its badly tarnished image and combat strong anti-American sentiment.

“If the United States wants to improve its reputation in the Arab and Muslim world, it should change its foreign policy,” Qatari political scientist Mohamed Mesfer told AFP when contacted by telephone in Doha.

A panel mandated by US lawmakers warned in a report published Wednesday that Washington must radically overhaul its public diplomacy if it wants to reverse its sinking popularity in the region.

The panel insisted that a major part of the problem was a failure to adequately communicate the substance of policy, particularly in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iraq.

“Sugar-coating and fast talking are no solutions, nor is absenting ourselves,” the entire 13-member panel echoed in its report. “Often, we are simply not present for the debate.”

Salama Ahmed Salama, leading editorialist in the government newspaper Al Ahram, acknowledged that “it is clear that the image of America in the Arab world is very bad.”

“Unfortunately, the Americans think that launching a campaign aimed at improving their image is sufficient, but they do not ask why they are hated,” he said.

He said the Arabs despised US support for Israel, US decisions to launch wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, its “ill treatment” of Arabs and Muslims within the United States, as well as US media “campaigns” against Islam.

Meanwhile, the Saudi Arabian journalist Daoud Shoryan, contacted in Riyadh, said “US policy toward Arab and Muslim countries has turned into a policy of imposition and not dialogue.”

Since the Palestinian uprising erupted in late September 2000, grassroots organizations in Arab countries have launched several campaigns to boycott American products or those carrying US brandnames.

US officials and Arab businessmen, however, say the main victim in the campaign were Arab-owned franchises.—AFP