With distrust of world leaders great, and apparently growing greater, the Pew Global Attitudes Project decided to ask respondents to its latest poll whom they actually do trust in international relations. The poll yielded some surprising results. Respondents were read a list of 10 political leaders and asked how much confidence they had in each – a lot, some, not too much or none at all – “to do the right thing regarding world affairs.” According to the survey: Americans have great confidence in President George W. Bush, but they have still more confidence in Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. For the French, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany inspires more confidence than their own president, Jacques Chirac. The Germans trust Chirac, President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, more than they trust Schroeder. But from a Western point of view, the most unsettling result of the survey is the strong vote of confidence given in the Muslim world to Osama bin Laden. The Al Qaeda leader, who is blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States that killed 3,000 people, was chosen as one of the three men most trusted to do the right thing in world affairs by the people of Indonesia, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and the Palestinian Authority. Full Story
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