WASHINGTON – Two-thirds of people in the United States say Iraqis are better off now than under Saddam Hussein, but many longtime U.S. allies are less optimistic, AP-Ipsos polling found.

Iraq is struggling to form a government, and the trial of Saddam is in its fifth month. A surge in violence after the Feb. 22 bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra raised fears that Iraq could descend into civil war.

Of the eight other countries surveyed, only residents of Britain, Italy and Canada were more likely to say Iraqis are “better off” now than they were under Saddam than to say they are “worse off.”

People in France, Germany, Mexico, South Korea and Spain say Iraq is worse off since the U.S. invasion in March 2003.

“Certainly the people have more freedom,” said retiree Adolph Jirka of Omaha, Neb. “But we keep hearing they don’t have electricity and those kinds of things. Overall, I’d have to say they’re better off, though.”

U.S. attitudes also differed from those in eight other countries on how Saddam should be punished if he is convicted of murder and torture. Americans want him to be executed. People in the other eight countries want him to spend life in prison.

People in the U.S. are strongly convinced that Saddam is getting a fair trial – with three-fourths indicating they felt that way. In other countries surveyed, they were less confident, though a majority in several countries felt the legal proceedings are fair.

On the question of how Iraqis are doing, a slight majority of Britons, 52 percent, and Canadians, 51 percent, said the Iraqis are better off now. More than four in 10 Italians, 43 percent, felt that way, according to the AP-Ipsos polls of about 1,000 adults in each of eight countries and 1,600 in a poll conducted in person in Mexico. They were conducted from Feb. 10 to 9 and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, 2.5 points in Mexico.

In Mexico, South Korea and Spain, people were pessimistic about the current plight of Iraqis, while in Germany and France – two countries that strongly opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq – people were about evenly divided.

“Iraq is in a worse situation now,” said Michael Degrange, an architecture student interviewed in Paris. “Under Saddam’s control, there was a sort of stability. There was an order even if it was had by brutal force.”

Order and stability have been in short supply in Iraq for a long time – especially the last couple of weeks.

The destruction of the 1,200-year-old shrine in Samarra in late February brought reprisals from Shiite militiamen, who attacked Sunni mosques around the country. Almost 400 people died in related violence in the week after the shrine bombing, the Iraqi government reported.

The trial of Saddam on charges of murder and torture has been proceeding in fits and starts since mid-October.

Almost six in 10 people in the U.S. want Saddam executed if he’s convicted at his trial.

“If he truly destroyed as many lives as they say he did, then he doesn’t deserve to live,” said Craig Larson, a military retiree who lives in Chesapeake, Va.

The poll found that people in the eight other countries, where the death penalty mostly has been abolished, prefer that the former Iraqi leader spend the rest of his life in prison.

“I hope that (Saddam) will be not sentenced to death,” said Giovanna Cippitello, sitting on a wall near the Pantheon in Rome, “but that he is made into a living example for other dictators around the world.”

The death penalty has been abolished in seven of the nine countries polled. South Korea has talked about abolishing it. Public support remains strong for state-sanctioned executions in the United States, where 1,012 people have been executed over the past 28 years and at least 3,300 more are on death row.

A study by Amnesty International found that more than nine of 10 executions worldwide in 2004 were carried out in the United States, China, Iran and Vietnam.

The poll found 73 percent of those surveyed in the United States said Saddam is getting a fair trial. Many in the other countries surveyed aren’t so sure. A third or less of the people in Mexico, Spain and South Korea and fewer than half in France say he is getting a fair shake.

“He’s getting as fair a trial as possible,” said Jessie Malone, a retail manager from Stillwater, Okla. “I don’t think he deserves a trial at all. In my opinion, it’s a joke that we’re going through the motions.”