PARIS -- Terrorist violence, by Islamists in particular, diminished considerably around the world in 2007, according to the authors of a new Canadian study based on American statistics.

The report entitled "Human Security Brief 2007" by lecturers at Simon Frazer University in Vancouver records that the number of victims of terrorist attacks dropped 40 percent over the year compared to 2006.

Their figures were based on three US sources: the National Counterterrorism Center, the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, and the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism at the University of Maryland.

The Canadian academics decided not to include the victims of the conflict in Iraq in the study.

"The intentional killing of civilians in wartime is not normally described as terrorism, but as war crime or crime against humanity," said the study's main author Andrew Mack.

After looking at the results of polls carried out last year in the Arab and Muslim world, especially in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the report also said that support for terrorism appeared to be waning.

"With respect to Islamist terrorism, the forces that have driven this decline appear to be getting stronger, not weaker," Mack said.

For Mack, the drop in popularity for Al-Qaeda in the Arab and Muslim world is due to the rejection of extremist ideology, particularly after "the terror groups' gratuitous and indiscriminate violence against their coreligionists."

"By deeply alienating the very publics whose support is critical to their cause, the Islamists have become their own worst enemies and created conditions that will likely bring about their eventual demise.

"Al-Qaeda and its affiliates are far from being eliminated, but the strategic outlook for the terror network is bleak," he said.

The study is available on the Internet at www.humansecurity.info.