Tourists at Ground Zero, where the mass terrorist attacks of 2001 prompted an outpouring of international solidarity, said Obama's win filled them with admiration — sometimes for the first time in years.

"Obama brings hope," said Leticia Giorello (26) an architecture student from Uruguay, as she surveyed the mammoth building site at the former World Trade Center. "Everybody in Latin America wanted Obama."

Eight years ago, the world rallied around the United States in response to the deaths of some 3000 people and the annihilation of the Twin Towers in Manhattan.

"We are all Americans," France's Le Monde newspaper famously declared.

But that goodwill vapourized when the world turned on President George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq and revelations of torture of prisoners.

The United States' battered image — already light years from the days when the country was widely seen as a role model — took another big hit two months ago with the collapse of the banking system.

Yet Tuesday's landslide election of Obama, the first black president and a stirring advocate for restoring US standing, has rekindled that love affair.

Celebrations broke out around the globe, from the Palestinian territories to the Balkans and from Africa to Asia.

At Ground Zero, a place of pilgrimage for many visitors to New York, tourists said they felt inspired.

"Many people in Japan have a tendency to attack the United States. It's cool to do that," said Daisuke Yamagapa (27) who pilots a Boeing 767 in Japan and was visiting New York with his parents.

"This will change with Obama. I think America is changing, especially when it comes to diplomacy. People are waiting for that."

Shirley Mellor (62) visiting from England with her three sisters, said the Bush administration had become a "laughing stock. Bush became a joke. People were always taking the mickey out of him."

How long the honeymoon will last

"That's why Obama's election is important," said one of her sisters, Joan Higgins (65). "It will affect the whole world."

Anna Grethe Jensen (53) fom Denmark, said that the United States had earned a reputation for riding roughshod over others.

"They always see the world from their perspective and forget how the rest of the world thinks," she said. "I think that will change and Europe will see America differently now."

How long the honeymoon will last is another question.

Vice president-elect Joseph Biden himself warned during the campaign that a foreign power would waste no time in putting the inexperienced Obama to the test.

And even as congratulations poured in from world capitals, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced the deployment of short-range missiles in Kaliningrad, a Russian territory well inside the European Union.

Robert Guttman, director of the Johns Hopkins' University SAIS Center on Politics and Foreign Relations, said the "image problem is going to be taken care of pretty quickly, just because of who Obama is."

However, Guttman warned that sky-high expectations mean Obama risks disappointing his far flung fans.

"We shouldn't get too carried away that this guy's going to be a new Messiah, because he's not," Guttman said. "He's not going to resolve all our problems right away."

AFP