Bush, Mush most untrustworthy leaders in the world

New York, June 17: US President George W Bush and his Pakistan counterpart Pervez Musharraf are regarded as most untrustworthy leaders in an opinion poll.

Musharraf fared worst in the poll. Only in China, 37 percent of the people felt that he instilled confidence as a leader, outweighing 30 percent people's opinion, a poll conducted by Worldpublicopinion.org found. Nigeria remained divided over the Pakistani leader and the other 18 nations gave negative reactions for him in a poll conducted in 20 countries including India. Bush got positive ratings only from India and Nigeria while respondents in Thailand shared mixed views. People from 16 of the 20 countries gave thumbs down to the US President. He also received the highest average percentage of negative ratings (67 percent).

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was not far behind the two. He got negative ratings in 13 nations. Only three nations were slightly positive while one was divided.

While Musharraf was rated negatively in most nations, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon received largely positive ratings.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, though relatively new to the world stage, got positive ratings in six nations, more than any other chief of the state.

Chinese President Hu Jintao received mixed reactions from the Indian population but earned negative ratings in 13 countries. Only Nigeria, South Korea, Iran, Azerbaijan and Ukraine gave support to Hu, according to the survey done in countries comprising 60 percent of the world population.

On an average, 44 percent of those surveyed around the world expressed little or no confidence in the Chinese leader. Only 28 percent showed some or a lot of confidence.

In all cases, opinion of people of the country to which a leader belonged was excluded from the poll and the average ratings.

Polls were conducted between January 10 and May 6, and margin of error is plus or minus 2-4 percent.

The poll was conducted among 19,751 respondents in 20 nations, including most of the largest nations China, India, the United States, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Russia as well as Mexico, Argentina, Britain, France and Spain.

ANI