Washington  - US President George W Bush and Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf have the world's worst marks as leaders, according to a study released Tuesday by the University of Maryland outside the US capital.

The WorldPublicOpinion. org poll sampled opinions of 19,751 residents in 20 countries.

Only respondents in two countries - Nigeria and India - gave Bush stronger positive than negative ratings. Thailand was nearly divided. Nigeria gave Bush a 60-per-cent positive and 33-per-cent negative rating. India gave the US leader a 45-per-cent positive and 34-per- cent negative score.

That was a bit better than Musharraf's dwindling fan club, a minority of one - China, which gave him a 37-per-cent positive versus a 30-per-cent negative rating.

It turns out however that the world has few truly respected leaders right now, and the poll found that none them inspired strong confidence on the world stage.

Some of the leaders were at least beloved at home - such as Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, China's Hu Jintao and Russia's Vladimir Putin. Gordon Brown skimmed through with a 48-per-cent positive, 46-per-cent negative rating in Britain.

France's Nicolas Sarkozy got a 54 per cent negative rating at home, only two percentage points behind Bush's home audience.

Only UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon came out on the "moderately positive" side of the ratings, with nine countries giving him a majority rating of confidence that he will do the right thing. (dpa)