U.S. Must Counteract Image in Muslim World, Panel Says

WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 — The United States must drastically increase and overhaul its public relations efforts to salvage its plummeting image among Muslims and Arabs abroad, a panel chosen by the Bush administration has found.

"Hostility toward America has reached shocking levels," the panel stated in its report, which will be released Wednesday. "What is required is not merely tactical adaptation but strategic, and radical, transformation."

The report added that "spin" and manipulative public relations "are not the answer," but that neither is avoiding the debate. A copy of the report was made available Tuesday to The New York Times.

The panel warned that the war in Iraq and the intensified conflict in the Middle East had increased anger at the United States, and that people throughout the world were ignorant of or misinformed about American policies.

"A process of unilateral disarmament in the weapons of advocacy over the last decade has contributed to widespread hostility toward Americans and left us vulnerable to lethal threats to our interests and our safety," said the panel, the United States Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World.

Led by Edward P. Djerejian, an Arab specialist and former ambassador and White House spokesman, the panel spent several months surveying the American efforts to promote the United States' views to the world's 1.5 billion Muslims. Its 13 members, including academics, diplomats and writers, traveled to the Middle East, Asia and Europe.