Mr Obama departs the White House in Washington en route to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday. -- PHOTO: REUTERS
NEW YORK - US PRESIDENT Barack Obama has boosted his country's image abroad by six points since his election in November with a 22-nation poll on Thursday showing 42 per cent of people expressing a favorable view of America.
'HONEYMOON EFFECT'
An Ipsos poll of 7,000 people in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan in March found that an average 48 per cent had a favorable view of Mr Obama, while 33 per cent had a positive view of the United States.
Mr Obama's Middle East trip and planned Cairo speech drew condemnation from Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who said in a taped message that the US leader had planted seeds for 'revenge and hatred' towards America in the Muslim world.
As Mr Obama prepares to speak to the Muslim world in Cairo in a bid to repair tattered US relations, the Ipsos/Reuters survey showed a 25 point jump in favourable views of America in Turkey, the only majority Muslim nation polled, to 49 per cent.
The poll was taken between April 14 and May 7, shortly after Mr Obama visited Istanbul and met with religious leaders as part of a bid to unite moderates of faiths against extremism.
'This suggests that any sort of strategy to engage with the Muslim world puts a premium on him as the messenger and going there and talking to them,' said Clifford Young of Ipsos Global Public Affairs, the international market research and polling company that carried out the online poll of 22,000 people.
'There's this very positive Obama effect and he is contributing significantly to increasing the US credibility around the world,' he said.
In India, where the Muslim population is a minority but still one of the largest in the world at 140 million or double the number of Turkish Muslims, the positive view of America rose one point to 73 per cent, while in China, where there are about 20 million Muslims, it rose eight points to 42 per cent.
Mr Obama, whose father was Muslim and who lived as a boy in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, hopes to mend a US image damaged by former President George W. Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the treatment of US military detainees.
He visited Saudi Arabia on Wednesday and met with King Abdullah. On Thursday the first black US president will speak to the Muslim world when he gives an address in Egypt. -- REUTERS
