Dharamsala Nov. 28 – His Holiness the Dalai Lama topped the list of most respected world leaders among Western Europeans and Americans, a poll showed Friday.
The new survey called “World Leaders,” was conducted by Harris Interactive for the International Herald Tribune and the all-news channel France 24. The survey will be conducted every two months.
In the six countries surveyed, the results differed sharply depending on whether the respondents were in Britain and the United States, on the one hand, or in France, Germany, Italy and Spain, on the other.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama was ranked the most respected leader, generally by a wide margin in every country polled except in the United States where former British Prime Minister edged out the Tibetan leader.
The other world leader ranked near the top in popularity was Pope Benedict XVI.
Respondents were asked to give their overall opinion of 19 world leaders, ranging from Ban Ki Moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, as well as their view of each leader’s global influence.
Those ranked near the bottom were Vladmir Putin, Assad, Fidel Castro of Cuba, Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Dmitri Medvedev of Russia and Hu Jintao of China.
Patrick Van Bloeme, chief executive for France at Harris Interactive, said the new survey would allow tracking of the various leaders over time, a longstanding practice among pollsters reviewing the popularity of the national leaders in their respective countries. The new survey is the first reviewing popularity of leaders in different countries in parallel, he said.
