ANKARA, September 29, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – US Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes, tasked with improving the badly battered US image in the Arab and Muslim worlds, was harshly criticized by Turkish women over the US Middle East policies.

Facing a second critical reception on her Middle East tour after a similar encounter in Saudi Arabia, Turkish women activists Wednesday, September 29, grilled the US envoy over the US-led invasion of Iraq and the deteriorating situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported.

"You cannot bring in war for the sake of peace. The United States cannot interfere in the democracy problem and solve it through war," Feray Sazman, a women's rights leader, told Hughes during a meeting in an Ankara museum.

Hughes was in Turkey on the last leg of a regional tour aimed at improving Washington's bad image, which has already taken her to Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Human rights leader Hidayet Sefkatli Tuksal added that she saw fear in the eyes of women and children in photographs from Iraq every day and it left her feeling "wounded and insulted".

"This war is really, really bringing all your positive efforts to the level of zero," she said.

"War makes the rights of women completely erased and poverty comes after war and women pay the cost," stressed Fatma Nevin Vargun, a Kurdish activist.

On Tuesday, Hughes was grilled by Saudi women, who blamed the US media for portraying Muslims as terrorists and Arab women as downtrodden.

"Why is the general image of the Arab woman that she isn't very happy? We are happy," one young student had said during the encounter.

In a meeting with the US envoy, Saudi women blamed the US media of being disingenuous in portraying Arab women as unhappy and wronged.

"We are happy. We want to show that image (but) the general image of the Arab woman in the American media is that she is not happy," a female student at Jeddah's private Dar Al-Hekma university told Hughes, drawing thunderous applause from colleagues.

"Your media is not really as fair as it used to be," came another voice from among the crowd of Saudi women who gathered in an amphitheater on Tuesday to "exchange" views with the American visitor.

Saudi women who met Hughes stressed that they had had enough of being portrayed as deprived of any rights.

"I don't want to drive, because I have my own driver," one of them defiantly told American journalists.

Women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to drive cars or to mix in public with men other than relatives.

"But it is not an absolute wall between men and women," one of the students insisted, as another grabbed the microphone to wonder why US media tar all Muslims with the terrorism brush.

Hughes, on her part, was keen to tell her Saudi audience that the United States "should not seek to impose our will on Saudi Arabia".

She also hailed reports that women would be allowed to work in Saudi Arabia, where only a limited number of professions are currently open to them.

The US envoy further stressed that she had been "surprised" by what she heard but also "impressed by their (the girls') outspokenness and intelligence."

"They clearly feel much a part of the debate in the society even though they don't have the right to vote nor to drive," she said.

During talks with Saudi officials, Hughes commended the Saudi efforts to fight what she termed "terrorism".