Zardari up, Nawaz down in US-backed group's poll

Face-to-face interviews were conducted July 15 to Aug. 7 with 4,900 adults throughout Pakistan’s four provinces, excluding areas in the North-West Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus one percentage point. The survey results will be available on the institute’s Web site, www.iri.org, on Friday. The I.R.I. has conducted surveys in Pakistan since 2002.
According to the poll, 80 percent of the respondents said they were opposed to United States assistance in Pakistan’s fight against terrorism, a 19 percentage-point increase since the last survey conducted by the institute in March.
The survey says that 76 percent of the respondents were opposed to Pakistan partnering with the United States on missile attacks against extremists by American drone aircraft. Such strikes have been under way for several years against militants from Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the tribal areas, and have recently intensified.
In order to improve American standing in Pakistan, the special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, had ordered an overhaul of the public diplomacy programmes and was sending several seasoned diplomats to bolster the embassy, a senior American official told the Times.
A public affairs strategy centered on the American desire for a strong relationship with Pakistan and focused on describing the common enemy as Al Qaeda and the Taliban was about to begin, the official said.
The new effort included spending about $30 million on educational and cultural exchanges between Pakistan and the United States, and providing more Fulbright scholarships for Pakistanis to study at American universities.