Little trust for leaders worldwide

At least the people of the United States are not alone. A new survey by WorldPublicOpinion.org, a research program of the University of Maryland, found that no world leaders are trusted outside their own countries and most are not trusted in their countries, either. "While the worldwide mistrust of George Bush has created a global leadership vacuum, no alternative leader has stepped into the breach," said Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org, according to the Reuters international news service. "Hu Jintao and Vladimir Putin are popular among some nations, but more mistrust them than trust them." Bush, in his final year as U.S. president, ranked just slightly ahead of Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmedinejad in terms of trust. Outside the United States, only 23 percent of people surveyed "a lot or some" confidence in Bush, compared to 22 percent for Ahmedinejad and 18 percent for Musharraf. The survey questioned people in 20 countries around the world. Leaders receiving the most confidence included U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon (35 percent), Russian President Vladimir Putin (32 percent) and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (30 percent). The survey questioned 19,751 people in 20 nations representing 60 percent of the world's population.