The premier of the Ramallah-based Palestinian government has been named among the top 100 "global thinkers" by an American news magazine.

Foreign Policy's December issue ranked Salam Fayyad at 23 "for bringing faith in technocracy to the Holy Land."

"In his three years in office, Fayyad has evolved from a bureaucrat's bureaucrat into a political figure in his own right. At the same time, he remains the West Bank leader most willing to work with his Israeli counterparts," the magazine reported.

Even if the latest round of Mideast peace talks comes to naught, the report noted, "Palestinians will still have the new schools, improved roads, and professional law enforcement agencies that are Fayyad's legacy.

In a separate op-ed in the same edition, Fayyad wrote that building a Palestinian state "was never intended to replace the political process, but to reinforce, and benefit, from it. The idea was to impart a sense of possibility about what might happen, what we would want to see happen: an end to the Israeli occupation and an opportunity for Palestinians to be able to live as free people in a country of our own."

The magazine placed US businessmen Warren Buffett and Bill Gates in the No. 1 spot.