America's tarnished image deteriorates further.

87 percent of Moroccans have an unfavourable view of the United States - up from 64 percent last year.

A recent poll of five Arab countries conducted by the Arab American Institute and Zogby International, produced little cause for optimism about attitudes toward the United States. Washington's image has reached new lows throughout the Arab and Maghreb region - a decline that spans a period of over five years.

The poll was based on 3,500 face-to-face interviews of randomly selected adult respondents in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon and it will come as no surprise that the chief cause of the tarnished image of the United States was primarily in response to U.S. policies in Iraq, Palestine and, to a lesser extent, Lebanon.

Jim Lobe, writing for "Final Call.com" reports that the poll also found that attitudes toward U.S. cultural and political values have also become increasingly negative, compared with previous surveys, although not nearly as negative as Arab views of specific policies.

Particularly remarkable, negative opinions toward the United States have increased steeply in two key Arab monarchies long considered close allies of Washington. In Jordan, nine out of 10 respondents said they held predominantly negative views of the U.S., up from only 32 percent on early 2005. Likewise, 87 percent of Moroccans said their views of the U.S. were unfavorable, up from 64 percent last year.

At least as worrisome to U.S. policymakers, a major beneficiary of growing Arab anger at Washington appeared to be Iran, according to AAI president James Zogby, who also acted as a consultant to Zogby International.

"As America's numbers go down, Iran's goes up," he told reporters. "That's the reality, and we're playing right into it."

The new survey, the third in a series that began in 2002, comes amid growing controversy in Washington over the Bush administration's policies in both Iraq and the broader Middle East.

Public confidence in the U.S. in Pres. Bush's approach to the Iraq war, in particular, has plummeted, especially since the Democratic sweep of the mid-term congressional elections in November. The long-awaited release of the report of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG), which called for a major overhaul of U.S. policies toward the region, including the engagement of Iran and Syria and a major new diplomatic effort to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, has further fueled the fierce debate.

Between 86 percent and 96 percent of respondents in Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Jordan; between 62 percent and 74 percent of Lebanese, and a majority of Egyptians cited U.S. policies toward Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon as having either a 'negative' or 'very negative' impact on their views of the U.S.

Asked about how their opinion of the U.S. had evolved over the past year, roughly three in four Egyptians and Jordanians, six in 10 Moroccans and Saudis, and nearly half of Lebanese respondents said their views were more negative.

Asked to identify the two biggest factors that contributed to their more negative views, respondents in each country except Lebanon (where U.S. policy toward Lebanon was cited as the most important factor) named Iraq and Palestine.

Similarly, asked to rank the impact of five key issues as having the greatest negative impact on their economic development and political stability in their countries, most respondents in all five countries put either the Arab-Israeli conflict or the Iraq war at the top of their lists, followed by the Israel-Lebanon conflict.

Overall, negative views of the U.S. were highest in Jordan (90 percent) and Morocco (87 percent), followed by Egypt (83 percent), and Saudi Arabia (82 percent).

In Lebanon, where opinions on a range of issues were highly polarized between Shia and Christian respondents, in particular, 68 percent of respondents said their views towards the U.S. were unfavorable, an increase from 60 percent in early 2005.

The survey also found high levels of uncertainty in all five countries compared with 2005. More respondents in each country said they considered themselves worse off than they were four years ago. In Jordan and Egypt, where nearly six out of 10 respondents said they were worse off, the results were particularly striking. That amounted to nearly a four-fold increase compared to their answers to the same question in early 2005.

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