Analysis: Iraq, other policies, encouraging anti-American alliances

An anti-war protest in Nairobi

WASHINGTON — The outpouring of anti-American rhetoric at the United Nations this week is demonstrating how anger at the United States is uniting the developing world in a way not seen since the 1980s, U.S. officials and analysts say.

Leaders such as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Sudan's Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are divided by background and political philosophies, but they spoke as one at the General Assembly regarding perceived U.S. bullying and misdeeds.

"There's a new sense of the oppressed versus the oppressor," said a senior U.S. official, who asked to remain unnamed. "What they have in common is their hatred of the U.S., and it's created this solidarity across Third World lines."

That solidarity hasn't been seen in the developing world since leftist liberation movements faded after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he said.

The fallout from the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and other Bush administration policies may be particularly visible in the new bonds between many Muslim nations and populist regimes of South America, an alliance that some call the "axis of the south."

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