| Regardless of how many warm and fuzzy dinners President Bush has with his European counterparts, the fact is most of "old Europe" still doesn't like Bush, trust Bush or want Bush as the self-appointed leader of bringing democracy to the rest of the world. NATO's modest commitment to helping a bit more with training of Iraqi security forces is a drop in the bucket compared to what we really would like by way of assistance from member countries.
WASHINGTON - President Bush is calling on European leaders to support his campaign to spread democracy abroad at a time people in many of those countries have doubts whether that should be the U.S. role in the world, Associated Press polling found.
A majority of people in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain said they thought it should not be the U.S. role to spread democracy, according to AP-Ipsos polls. A majority of those living in Canada, Mexico and South Korea also disagreed with that role.
Bush is on a five-day fence-mending trip to Europe after tensions were raised there by the war in Iraq. In a speech Monday in Brussels, Belgium, the president promoted democracy as the path forward for a host of countries, from Saudi Arabia to Iran and Syria, and urged European leaders to move beyond the rift over Iraq and join his pro-liberty campaign.
"This strategy is not American strategy, or European strategy, or Western strategy," Bush said in an echo of the broad themes of his inaugural address a month ago. "Spreading liberty for the sake of peace is the cause of all mankind."
Yet the public skepticism reflected in a new AP-Ipsos poll in Europe indicates the American president faces plenty of work on that front — a development that analysts of international relations suggested was not surprising.
"There's still wariness and resentment of the United States in general," said Michael Mandelbaum, a professor who specializes in European studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Bush's efforts, he said, were having a limited impact in spreading democracy.
"In the wake of the Iraq war, there's particular suspicion of this administration," Mandelbaum added.
White House counselor Dan Bartlett suggested that foreigners may misunderstand Bush's plan to spread the liberties that Europeans and Americans take for granted.
"People get in their mind that spreading freedom means war and that's not the case," Bartlett said in an interview Tuesday on ABC's "Good Morning America." "Some of those opinion polls are reading in to it a little more than what President Bush intends."
Resistance to Bush's plans to promote democracy abroad was strongest in France, with 84 percent saying the United States should not play that role, according to the polling conducted for the Associated Press by Ipsos, an international polling firm.
About as many Germans took that position, 80 percent, while two-thirds of those in Britain said they didn't think the United States should be exporting democracy. Just over half of those in Spain and Italy felt that way.
"It's hard to believe our allies are indifferent to the spread of democracy," said Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution.
By WILL LESTER
Associated Press Writer
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