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Muslim world sees UN dominated by US: poll
A poll of seven majority Muslim nations found people conflicted about the United Nations, on the one hand perceiving it as dominated by the United States and unhelpful in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while on the other supporting a more active U.N. with broader powers. I guess that's fair. We see the UN as being dominated by bloody-handed dictatorships, kleptocracies, and various flavors of Nazis. The WorldPublicOpinion.org poll released Wednesday surveyed the Arab Muslim countries of Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Territories along with Iran, Turkey, Indonesia, Azerbaijan and Muslims in Nigeria. Respondents in every country besides Azerbaijan felt that the "U.S. basically controls the U.N. and can almost always make the U.N. do what the U.S. wants" as opposed to the view that the U.S. can use its veto to stop the U.N. but cannot control it. The international body got its lowest ratings in its work to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which highly correlated with perceptions of U.S. control, and the conflict in Darfur. "I think there are determinants of public opinion in the region regarding the U.N. and the most important factor is the respect, or perceived respect, of U.N. resolutions vis a vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and invasions of Iraq since 1990," said Dr. Fares Braizat of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan, which conducted the Jordanian portion of the survey. At the same time Muslim publics overwhelmingly support a more dynamic, involved United Nations (64 percent on average), distinguishing between a U.N. they feel in principle should be a powerful actor and the existing body they perceive as being controlled by the U.S. "While many people in Muslim countries express disappointment with the U.N., this actually masks their underlying desire for a U.N. that is robust and powerful," said Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org. Posted by: Fred 2008-12-04 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=256528 |