Most people living in Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey say they believe the US is conducting its campaign against terror to control Middle East oil and to dominate the world, according to a new poll.
The governments in all four Muslim-majority countries have strong ties with the US.
A sizable number of people in France, Germany and Russia also have these suspicions about the campaign against terror, according to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, which was released on Tuesday.
The polls were taken last month, before the train bombings in Spain that claimed the lives of at least 200 people.
In a surprise defeat, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's conservatives on Sunday became the first government that backed Washington in Iraq to be voted from office.
When people in the nine countries -- including Britain and the US -- were asked if the campaign against terrorism was a sincere effort to reduce international terrorism, majorities in France, Germany and the four Muslim-majority countries felt it was not.
Almost half in Russia felt it was not, while majorities in Britain and the US said they believed the campaign was a sincere effort to fight terrorism.
The surveys found considerable cynicism and anger among the Muslim-majority countries a year after the US invasion of Iraq. And they found a growing desire among European countries for a balance of power between the EU and the US.
"Europeans want to check our power," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. "There's considerable support for making the European Union as powerful as the United States."
Europeans in those countries are eager to set up security arrangements independent from the US.
People in the surveyed Muslim countries remain angry about US policies, and even supportive of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi terrorist who took credit for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the US.
Almost two-thirds of the people in Pakistan say they view bin Laden favorably -- a significant finding because US troops are trying to find bin Laden in the mountainous region on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
More than half of those in Jordan and almost half of those polled in Morocco had a favorable view of the Saudi terrorist.
Anger toward the US in these Muslim-majority countries remains very high, Kohut said, though the intensity has dropped a bit since last May.
While seven in 10 in the US feel their country takes into account the interests of other countries when making international policy decisions, few in the other countries shared that view.
Majorities in all the countries except Pakistan, and almost half there, felt the US doesn't make much of an effort to consider the interests of other countries in its policy decisions.
At least two-thirds of people living in France, Germany, Russia and Turkey thought it would be a good thing if the EU became as powerful as the US. Turkey and Russia are not currently members of the EU.
A majority in Britain, France, Germany, Russia and Turkey thought Western Europe should take a more independent approach to security and diplomatic matters.
In other key findings:
While support for the war on terrorism has dropped in many of those countries, it has increased in Russia -- 73 percent approve -- and is almost as strong there as in the US.
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