|
LONDON: Israel and Iran are perceived as having the
most negative influence on the world, followed closely by North
Korea and the United States, according to a poll to be released
Tuesday.
At the other end of the scale,
Japan, France, the European Union and Canada are seen as most
positive, according to the survey by BBC World Service radio of
28,000 people in 27 countries.
Respondents were given a list of
12 countries and asked if they had a “mostly positive or mostly
negative influence in the world.”
The country with the highest
negative response was Israel with 56 percent negative and 17 percent
positive, followed by Iran on 54 percent negative and 18 positive.
The United States was seen as
negative by 51 percent, with 30 percent seeing it as positive,
followed by isolated Stalinist state North Korea, perceived as
negative by 48 percent of those asked against 19 percent positive.
“It appears that people around
the world tend to look negatively on countries whose profile is
marked by the pursuit of military power,” said Steven Kull, head
of one of the study’s co-organizers.
“Countries that relate to the
world primarily through soft power, like France and Japan and the EU
in general, tend to be viewed positively,” said Kull, of the
Program on International Policy Attitudes at the United States’
Maryland University.
The survey was carried out for
the BBC World Service by the Maryland researchers and the
international polling firm GlobeScan.
Over the three years the BBC has
been tracking opinions about countries’ influence in the world,
most ratings have remained relatively stable.
There has been improvement in the
case of India, a slight decline in views about Britain and a
significant fall in positive evaluations of the United States.
Russia, China, and France also
lost ground over the period, mainly between 2005 and 2006.
The most positive ratings went to
Canada on 54 percent positive, the EU with 53 percent and France
with 50 percent. Japan is viewed favorably by 24 countries, France
by 25 countries and the EU by 24.
Only three other countries were
seen more positively than negatively: Britain with 45 percent
favorable but 28 percent negative, China with 42 positive and 32
percent negative and India with 37 percent favorable, 26 percent
negative.
GlobeScan head Doug Miller noted
that India was the only country that had significantly improved its
global stature in the past year, and was now even with China.
“Britain, while slipping a bit
since 2005, appears to be avoiding the steep decline that its war
partner, the US, is suffering,” he added.
--AFP
|
