Americans favour India more than Pakistan

India is viewed better than Pakistan as a country to visit by Americans.

Gallup's annual World Affairs survey, which was released on Friday, said 66 per cent of the Americans participating in the poll, preferred India, while only 23 per cent viewed Pakistan favourably.

about the poll....

Canada topped the list, while Iran was in last position.

According to the Gallup survey, 90 per cent of Americans viewed Canada favourably among 20 nations that figure prominently in the news or US foreign policy.

Only 49 per cent viewed Mexico favourably at a time its image has suffered from intensifying violence in the drug war.

Iran was seen favourably by only 10 per cent of Americans in the poll after a year dominated by headlines over its nuclear program and crackdown on anti-government protesters.

North Korea was next-to-last with only a 14 per cent favourability rating.

Gallup found six other countries were viewed favourably by a majority of Americans: Britain (87 per cent), Germany (80 per cent), Japan (77 per cent), Israel (67 per cent), France (63 per cent) and Egypt (58 per cent).

Those nations with the lowest favourability ratings in the poll included: Afghanistan (18 per cent), the Palestinian Authority (20 per cent), Yemen (21 per cent), Iraq (23 per cent), Cuba (29 per cent), and Saudi Arabia (35 per cent).

Yemen was included for the first time in the survey.

Americans had mixed views about China, a growing economic rival, with 42 per cent viewing it favourably and 53 per cent unfavourably.

Russia, which saw its favourability rating in 2009 drop to 40 per cent, rebounded in this year's survey to 47 per cent.

The results were based on telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,025 adult Americans, conducted from February 1 to 3. The survey has a margin of error of four percentage points.