Public support in the United States for the war in Iraq has eroded substantially over the past several months and Americans are increasingly critical of the way President George W. Bush is handling the conflict, a poll published on Thursday showed.

The latest New York Times/CBS News poll, which was conducted between Friday through Tuesday, found that the US public is now evenly divided over whether the US military should stay for as long as it takes to stabilize Iraq or pull out as soon as possible.

Forty-one percent of the respondents approved Bush's handling of Iraq, down from 49 percent last month and 59 percent in December last year.

Forty-seven of those polled said the United States had done the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, down from 58 percent a month earlier and 63 percent in December last year when former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was captured.

Forty-six percent of those canvassed said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq, up from 37 percent last month and 31 percent in December.

The diminished public support for the war, however, did not translate into any significant advantage for Bush's Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry. The poll showed the two men remaining in a statistical dead heat, both in a head-to-head matchup and in a three-way race that included Ralph Nader, an independent candidate.

The survey found that Bush's approval rating had slid to 46 percent, the lowest level of his presidency, down from 71 percent in March last year and a high of 89 percent just after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

The poll questioned 1,042 people across the country, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

(Xinhua News Agency April 30, 2004)