White House to Open Communications Office to Counter Anti-U.S. Sentiment
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| The White House is formally opening its Office of Global Communications targeting the Middle East and Europe to enhance its image abroad. |
WASHINGTON,
July 30 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The White House will
formally open an Office of Global Communications to bolster U.S.
efforts at public diplomacy and enhance the U.S. image abroad,
spokesman Ari Fleischer said Tuesday.
The
office will specifically target the Middle East, where Arabs feel the
United States is pro-Israel at the expense of Palestinians and cannot
be trusted, and Europe, where many are appalled at what they perceive
as a go-it-alone foreign policy: two key areas where the United States
has an image problem.
Angering
many allies, Bush has disavowed international pacts on global warming,
missile defense systems, germ warfare and an international criminal
court; threatening war against Iraq; and his support for capital
punishment. Last week, he withheld $34 million from a United Nations
population fund, reports news agencies.
One
U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, "Right
now it would be safe to say that Europe and the Middle East are
serious priorities, but the focus is going to be on the whole world,
Asia, Africa, Latin America, everywhere."
The
White House Coalition Information Center, an operation with branches
in London and Islamabad, was set up on Oct. 26 in response to concerns
that the United States and its allies were losing the information
battle with Afghanistan's former Taliban leadership, reports news
agencies.
"Public
diplomacy is an ongoing and important part of America's mission abroad
to get the American story out to other nations," Fleischer told
reporters at the White House, confirming a report that appeared
Tuesday in the Washington Post about the creation of such an office.
Fleischer
said the office would seek to explain "what America is all about
and why America does what it does."
"The
President... carries a very important megaphone about what America is,
what our ideals are as a country, what we represent abroad and this is
a sign of the importance the President attaches to how other nations
see the United States," Fleischer said.
The
new office will add "thematic and strategic value" as well
as presidential clout to the role already played by the U.S. State
Department in presenting the public face of the United States to the
rest of the world, a senior Bush administration official told the
daily.
In
response to questions whether the new office might duplicate efforts
by the State Department, Fleischer said officials there "know it
can boost their efforts to communicate their seriousness and their
purpose around the world when they see that the President and the
White House are involved in it."
He
also assured that there would be no deliberate disinformation
campaigns emerging from the office.
The
Pentagon was embroiled in a controversy over such a possibility last
spring, when plans to create an office of Strategic Information fell
by the wayside after revelations of a suggestion that false or
misleading information could be deliberately planted in foreign media.
Among
the projects of the new office, to be up and running by autumn, is
Radio Sawa, a 24-hour U.S. government radio station that began
Arabic-language transmission in FM to Amman, Kuwait, Dubai and Abu
Dhabi in the spring, the daily reported.
From
AM transmitters in Kuwait and Rhodes, it is also audible in Iraq,
Egypt, Lebanon and Syria. U.S. officials have cited anecdotal evidence
from the region to say the experiment has been a success, reports news
agencies.
The
U.S. image abroad, particularly in the contentious Middle East, has
become tarnished, analysts observed, so much so that it is suffering
from an acute global image problem, the New York-based Council on
Foreign Relations (CFR) concluded Monday.
A
CFR report released Tuesday urged the Bush administration to reach for
"a deeper understanding of foreign attitudes and more effective
communication of our policies," to keep global alienation to a
minimum, reports news agencies.
"Negative
attitudes about U.S. policy are also pervasive in frontline states in
the war on terrorism and among our closest allies," the CFR task
force of scholars, former diplomats and news executives said. They
cited a "love-resentment divide" that characterizes much of
the worldview of the United States.
"A
consensus is emerging, made far more urgent by the war on terrorism,
that U.S. public diplomacy requires new thinking," said the
report. "We must come to understand and accept that 'image
problems' and 'foreign policy' are not things apart: They are both
part of an integrated whole."
News
agencies report, however, there was no indication given the office
will undertake an evaluation of the policies that have upset other
nations.
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