Much of world thinks Bush is dangerous

LONDON, Jan 19 (AFP) - A wide majority of people questioned in a BBC World Service global opinion poll published Wednesday believe that US President George W. Bush has made the world more dangerous.
Almost half of the nearly 21,000 people in 21 countries who responded to the poll also made no distinction between the Bush administration and America itself. They saw US influence in the world as largely negative and viewed Americans negatively as well.
In none of the countries polled was there support for contributing troops to Iraq.
"Negative feelings about Bush are high and are generalizing to the American people who reelected him," said Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, which carried out the poll in collaboration with the international polling company GlobalScan.
"This is quite a grim picture for the US," he said.
In senate confirmation hearings, Bush's nominee as secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, Tuesday acknowledged the need for more diplomacy and for the rebuilding of alliances. She said the US interaction with the world "must be a conversation not a monologue."
But typically, one British contributor to the World Service web site Wednesday said Bush's re-election "means more pollution, war and social injustice (particularly in America)." He asked, "Whatever happened to the freedom-loving, forward-thinking, right-minded people that made America the envy of the rest of us?"
On average across all countries, the BBC poll indicated that 58 percent of people believe Bush's re-election has made the world more dangerous. Only in three countries, Poland, India and the Philippines, was there a majority of support for Bush.
But even in traditional US allies such as Germany, France and Britain, as well as in neighboring Canada and Mexico, sentiment was predominantly anti-Bush. In Turkey, a US ally and the only Muslim member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 82 percent of those polled said Bush's re-election was negative for world peace.
Anti-Bush sentiment was also strong in Latin America, with 79 percent of those polled in Argentina and 78 percent in Brazil describing his re-election in negative terms.
In the poll, which took place from November 15 to January 5, between 500 and 1,800 people were surveyed in each country. The margin of error in extrapolating the results to the entire population was placed between 2.5 and four percentage points, depending on the country.

01/19/2005 15:50 GMT - AFP