An overwhelming majority (83.7%) believe peace can be achieved through peace talks, the latest result of an opinion poll on peace conducted by Social Indicator has revealed.
The poll conducted from 31 January to 14 February says that 81.9% Sinhala, 95.2% Tamil, 91.8% Muslim and 89.9% Upcountry Tamils believe in negotiations to achieve peace.
The majority of Tamils (85.9%) and Upcountry Tamils (79.6%) have approved Norway assisting in the peace process.
Meanwhile, an overall disapproval of the Norwegian assistance in the peace process that has mainly stemmed from the Sinhala community seems to be on the increase with a current disapproval of 29.4%. The figure was 17.9% last May. It was also evident that the majority of the population (56.7%) believes, the Government is truly committed to finding peace through peace talks. However this figure was at its peak last July (70.2%). The overwhelming majority of the Tamil (84.5%) and Muslim (84.2%) communities stressed the importance of having foreign monitors to monitor the ceasefire while 41.1% of the Sinhala community said it is not essential. However, there is a drop in the national trend of believing that the service of the foreign monitors are essential.
The majority of the Tamils (82.7%) believe that the LTTE is the sole representative of the Tamils, whilst 65% of the Sinhala community believed otherwise.
44.9% of the Muslims and 45.6% of the upcountry Tamils advocate the widest possible spectrum of involvement in negotiations whilst 19% of the Sinhala community believe that only the Government and the LTTE should be involved in the negotiation, twenty eight percent of Tamils wanted an international third party involvement.
There is an increase in the national trend that Indian involvement will add a positive impact to the peace process, with a majority of the Tamils, Muslims and the upcountry Tamils, believing that India's involvement is essential in the peace process.