Coalition allies lament: It's still 'America first'

Most of Washington's friends seem resigned to this sort of US hegemony: Their military weakness gives them little basis for complaint. It certainly has not rankled too deeply with Russian President Vladimir Putin, for example. When Bush announced earlier this month that the United States would pull out of the ABM treaty, Putin said little other than he felt it was "a mistake."

Still, mistrust of America runs deep in some quarters, according to a recent survey of opinionmakers in 24 countries by the Pew Center for the People and the Press and the Paris-based daily International Herald Tribune.

While 70 percent of American respondents said they felt Washington was taking its partners' interests into account in the fight against terrorism, 62 percent of non-Americans believed that the United States "is acting mainly on its own interests."

Seventy percent of foreign respondents said that most or many people in their countries think that "it's good that Americans now know what it's like to be vulnerable."

Overall, however, support for America's position is strong, with nearly 70 percent of foreign interviewees saying many or most people in their countries backed Washington against Al Qaeda: The figure rose to 89 percent in Western Europe, and dropped to 45 percent in the Islamic world.

Nowhere, however, is there majority support for any US attack on countries such as Iraq or Somalia, if they were found to harbor terrorists: Only 29 percent of foreign respondents supported such a development.

Not, however, that this means the Arab street would rise up in revolt were Washington to strike at Iraq: Predictions of such turmoil proved false 11 years ago, during the Gulf War, and earlier this year, when US warplanes began bombing targets in Afghanistan.

Indeed, the experts in Middle Eastern countries who answered the Pew survey's questions said that 48 percent of their fellow countrymen had a very favorable or mostly favorable opinion of the United States, compared with 49 percent who have a very or mostly unfavorable view.

In the crucible of the Middle East, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, both sides are still hoping that the United States will be able to broker an end to the current violence and then a return to a peace process.

The events of 2001, however, upended one of the principles of peacemaking in the Middle East: the idea that it was up to the United States - Israel's financial life-support - to cajole, pressure, and otherwise nudge the Jewish state toward a permanent settlement with the Palestinians.

As the year closes, Washington is applying pressure much more forcefully and exclusively on the Palestinians than ever before.

Many Israelis feel that the United States has come to accept their "kill-them-before-they-kill-us" approach to the conflict with the Palestinians, exemplified by Israel's policy of assassinating Palestinians they believe are planning terror attacks.

A senior Israeli diplomat estimates that 12 months ago, US government support for "the Israeli way of fighting against terrorism" was between 50 percent and 60 percent. Today, he says, speaking on condition of anonymity, it is 95 percent.

Immediately after Sept. 11, it was by no means certain that the US would move closer to Israel. A desire to put together a strong coalition of Arab partners pulled some US policymakers in the opposite direction: They argued that now was the time to push the Israelis toward a resolution, or at least a less militaristic approach to the Palestinian uprising.

But since then it has grown difficult for Washington, while bombing suspected terrorists in Afghanistan, to suggest that the Israelis should show restraint.

The Palestinians, meanwhile, have got something out of a changed America, but mostly in the form of rhetoric. Bush's references to a Palestinian state and Secretary of State Colin Powell's call for an end to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories were landmarks for Palestinians - evidence that the US government imagines a future more or less in line with their own hopes.

But Palestinians realize, says Palestinian Legislative Council member Abdul Jawad Saleh, that despite these encouraging words "policy has shifted in an important way in favor of Israel."

Fred Weir in Moscow and Cameron W. Barr in Jerusalem contributed to this article.

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