HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ---------------------------State dept to study why world hates US
WASHINGTON, Aug 29: Why do they hate us? US officials will spend two days
next week grappling with this question, as 20 outside experts share their views
with some 50 participants at a State Department conference studying
anti-Americanism.
"The purpose of this conference is to explore various
manifestations and roots of anti-Americanism around the world, what it means for
the United States and how the United States may address it," State Department
spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters on Wednesday.
The 20 experts -
including novelist Salman Rushdie - from the United States and abroad will
discuss the growing resentment in the Arab world and elsewhere to an audience of
about 50 US officials.
The conference, which Boucher said will be a
"closed, off the record" event, is hosted by the State Department's Bureau of
Intelligence and Research and the National Intelligence Council - the CIA's long
and medium range policy planning shop. It is scheduled for Sept. 4-5 at the Wye
Plantation in Maryland, where the Israelis and Palestinians negotiated their
last major peace agreement in 1999.
Panels in the conference include:
"Regional attitudes towards the United States," "Understanding Anti-Americanism
- has the American model become a lightning rod for global discourse?" and "New
players in the anti-American coalition - has soft power hurt or helped America's
image?"
"This conference is the culmination of a project on
anti-Americanism that the bureau has been doing, which has looked at the
phenomenon in Europe and Russia and the Muslim world," Boucher said. "And their
purpose is to sort of explore the various manifestations and the roots and the
reasons, and to make it improve the quality of their product and their
explanation, their analysis for the secretary (of state) and the rest of the
people who use their analysis within the US government," he added.
The
timing of the meeting is particularly important given recent criticism from
European and Arab governments of possible US military action against Iraq. After
a speech on Monday by Vice President Cheney where he virtually ruled out the
possibility of seeking the return of UN weapons inspectors to Iraq, numerous
ambassadors and foreign governments flooded the State Department's switchboard.
According to an analysis of foreign media conducted between March 15 and
Aug. 15 by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, "little
sympathy could be found in Arab or Muslim papers" for military action against
Iraq. The report goes on to say, "A common theme was that the campaign against
Iraq was simply a way to gain control of Iraqi oil, help the US economy and
boost the president's popularity."
The survey released internally on
Monday also notes that a full 68 per cent of newspaper editorials analysed in
NATO countries and Australia opposed military action against Iraq. In the
analysis of Western European editorials, the report says, "Many sources worried
that a military campaign to oust Hussein would trigger a storm of indignation in
the Middle East."
http://www.dawn.com/2002/08/30/int2.htm
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