Arabs in survey prefer France over United States

Arabs across the Middle East remain deeply skeptical of U.S. motives and policies in Iraq, and more than one in five would prefer to see France replace the United States as the world’s only superpower, according to a major new survey released yesterday.

University of Maryland scholar Shibley Telhami, who conducted the survey with the polling firm Zogby International, said the 2003 war in Iraq and its aftermath have become “the prism through which Arabs look at the United States and the world.”

Nearly four out of five of Arabs polled said the war in Iraq had brought more terrorism to the region, and a similar margin said the war had left Iraqis worse off than they had been under Saddam Hussein.

The survey, conducted just as Iraqis were voting in October on a new constitution, found that 58 percent of those polled believe there is less democracy in the region since the war began. That number was a slight decline from the 64 percent who expressed skepticism in a similar poll in 2004.

On a question of what drives U.S. policy in the Middle East, the top answers were oil (76 percent); protecting Israel (68 percent); dominating the region (63 percent); and “weakening the Muslim world” (59 percent). Just 6 percent of those polled said democracy and spreading human rights motivated U.S. policy.

President Bush has said the campaign in Iraq is part of a larger strategy to promote freedom and representative government across the region.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack cautioned yesterday against using any one opinion poll to gauge a massive, long-term public diplomacy effort.

Mr. McCormack said analysts should be “cautious about polls concerning what are really fundamental historical changes that are going on in the Middle East.”

The survey included direct interviews with nearly 4,000 respondents in six Arab nations: Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates. The margin of error in individual countries ranged from 3.5 percent to 4.5 percent.

Mr. Telhami said the poll found that France has seen its popularity and influence soar in the region because of its outspoken opposition in 2003 to going to war in Iraq.

Some 21 percent said they would prefer that France be the globe’s dominant power, compared with just 6 percent who chose the United States.

Israel (70 percent) and the United States (63 percent) were named as the two countries that “pose the biggest threat to you.”

French President Jacques Chirac received the most votes in a question of which foreign leader was most admired in the Arab world, while Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and President Bush were named the two most disliked foreign leaders.

The survey was concluded, however, just before a wave of riots swept France, pitting police against largely Muslim youths in a number of poor, isolated immigrant enclaves.

The poll also found little popular support for the extreme Islamist vision promoted by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. But 36 percent of the respondents said they “sympathized” with al Qaeda for confronting the United States in the region.

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