WASHINGTON: Egyptians mistrust US policy goals in the Middle East and see President Barack Obama as being closely aligned with it, but there are signs that the anti-US attitude is thawing, according to a poll out late Tuesday.
Sixty-seven percent of the Egyptians surveyed by the College Park, Maryland-based WorldPublicOpinion.org said the United States plays a negative role in the world.
The poll was released as Obama traveled to the Middle East and prepared to deliver a major address to the Muslim world in Cairo on Thursday.
Seventy-six percent of Egyptians polled believe the United States is out to weaken and divide the Islamic world.
Eighty percent believe that the United States wants to control Middle East oil, and that the United States wants to impose American culture on Muslim countries – figures virtually unchanged from a similar World Public Opinion poll in 2008.
Yet Obama has better ratings than his predecessor George W. Bush: 39 percent of those polled said they have some or a lot of confidence that Obama would do the right thing in international affairs, up sharply from the 8 percent who viewed Bush positively in January 2008.
Favorable views of the US government have also improved, from 27 percent in August 2008 to 46 percent in the current poll.
Egyptians appear to be saying to Obama, Show me you are really different, said Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org, a project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland.
The poll was conducted in face-to-face interviews between April 25 and May 12 with 600 urban Egyptians, and has a 4.1 percent margin of error. -AFP
