Baltic Global Peace Index- Up's and down's

LONDON- Most countries in the Baltics (with the exception of Estonia)are becoming more peaceful compared to last year, as the Global Peace Index (GPI)revealed their statistics in a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

LETA reports that authors of the report encourage the governmentsglobally to pay yet more attention to ensuring education, welfare and goodgovernance principles in order to promote greater global stability. At the sametime, the report underlines the role of businessmen in achieving this goal.

The Index ranked Estonia 35th in its Global Peace Index; lastyear Estonia placed 28th.

The Global Peace Index ranks countries of the world according to theirpeacefulness on the basis of 24 indicators measuring both internal and externalpeacefulness of nations, the EIU said.

The indicators include the levels of violence, organized crime anddefense spending within a country. The index has also been correlated against arange of social development indicators including democracy, transparency,education and well-being.

This is the second edition of the survey, the first was conducted in2007.

Estonia's highindex ranking was due to the low level of internal organized conflict, theauthors of the survey said.

A lower score on a scale of 1 to 5 indicates a more peaceful country. Estonia'soverall score was 1.176.

Iceland toppedthe rankings with a score of 1.176. Next came Denmark,Norway, New Zealand, Japan,Ireland, Portugal, Finland,Luxembourg and Austria.

In the group of Central and Eastern European countries Estoniaplaced 7th. In that group Sloveniadid best, ranking 16th overall with a score of 1.491.

The Czech Republicplaced 17th, Hungary 18th, Slovakia 20th, Romania24th, Poland 31st, Latvia 39th, Lithuania 41stand Bulgaria57th.

Britain's scoreof 1.801 put it in 49th position, the United States placed 97th and Russia 131st.

Israel, Afghanistan, Sudan,Somalia and Iraq held thefive bottom spots among the 140 countries covered by this year's index.