US President George W. Bush presents more of a threat to world peace than the leaders of North Korea and Iran, and only Osama bin Laden is more feared, according to a poll of British voters published in The Guardian on Friday.
A majority of voters in Britain, Canada and Mexico, all key American allies, also think that the United States' foreign policy has made the world less safe since 2001, the survey showed.
Three-quarters of Britons said that George W. Bush presented a great or moderate threat to peace in the world, bested only by the al Qaeda leader at 87 percent.
By contrast, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il, who recently tested a nuclear bomb, was considered a threat to peace by 69 percent of voters, compared to 65 percent for Hassan Nasrullah, the leader of the Hizbullah, and 62 percent for firebrand Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In addition, 69 percent of British voters said that US policy had made the world less safe, along with 62 percent of Canadians and 52 percent of Mexicans. About 36 percent of Israelis gave the same response, a plurality.
Only Israeli voters continue to believe that the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 was justified, by a margin of 59 percent to 34 percent. At the same time, 89 percent of Mexicans, 73 percent of Canadians and 71 percent of Britons now think the war was unjustified.
The poll was conducted by ICM, which interviewed 1,010 people in Britain. Other local polling firms surveyed 1,007 people in Canada, 1,078 in Israel and 1,010 in Mexico.