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WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has launched a behind-the-scenes campaign in defense of World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz against calls he relinquish his job. While President Bush and other senior administration officials have publicly praised Mr. Wolfowitz, Ms. Rice has begun a quiet but concerted effort to reverse low European support for his leadership. Over the last week, Ms. Rice "spoke with several European foreign ministers about her positive impression of Paul Wolfowitz and the job he is doing at the World Bank," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. Other U.S. officials said the involvement of the U.S.'s...

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz is looking increasingly like former U.S. president Bill Clinton. Both are global public figures who became infamous for scandals involving women. As we all know, president Clinton fought tooth and nail and emerged as gracefully as could be expected from his scandal involving White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Not only did he escape impeachment, but most of all Clinton delivered prolonged prosperity to America. Much of America and the world seem to have forgiven him and many even adore him. Wolfowitz seems to have learned something from Clinton. Despite the intense pressure from within and...

Axis of Soros May 9, 2007; Page A16 Mark Malloch Brown spoke Monday to a crowded auditorium at the World Bank's headquarters, warning that the bank's mission was "hugely at risk" as long as Paul Wolfowitz remained its president. Only hours earlier, news leaked that a special committee investigating Mr. Wolfowitz had accused him of violating conflict-of-interest rules. A coincidence? We doubt it. Mr. Malloch Brown, remember, was until last year Kofi Annan's deputy at the United Nations. In that position, he distinguished himself by spinning away the $100 billion Oil for Food scandal as little more than a blip...

In the summer of 1997, two senior World Bank officials published an academic article under the cheerful title, "Africa on the Move: Attracting Private Capital to a Changing Continent." The authors, Jean-Louis Sarbib of France and Callisto Madavo of Zimbabwe, were responsible for the bank's work in Africa, and they took an optimistic view. "A new spirit of social and economic progress has energized much of the region," they wrote, "and gradually the rest of the world is beginning to take notice." Among the bank's own contributions to this African Renaissance, as it was then being billed, was something called...

Leading governments of Europe, mounting a new campaign to push Paul D. Wolfowitz from his job as World Bank president, signaled Monday that they were willing to let the United States choose the bank’s next chief, but only if Mr. Wolfowitz stepped down soon, European officials said. European officials had previously indicated that they wanted to end the tradition of the United States picking the World Bank leader. But now the officials are hoping to enlist American help in persuading Mr. Wolfowitz to resign voluntarily, rather than be rebuked or ousted. The goal, they said, is to avert a public...

The current crisis at the World Bank is a chance finally to fix the governance problems at the world’s major institution for promoting development. It is time for the US to give up its hold on picking the president of the bank and for Europe to give up its grip on choosing the president of the International Monetary Fund. Had the process of picking the president been truly democratic and fair in the first place, it is almost certain that Paul Wolfowitz would never have been selected. There is now a global consensus that Mr Wolfowitz will have to leave...

Clarice Feldman Paul Wolfowitz noted the inconsistency in the application of the World Bank's conflict of interest position. It had permitted the wife of former Bank Managing Director Zheng to remain in her position, but required that Shaha Riza, his significant other, leave the Bank. Zheng has filed a facially preposterous response. Law professor Kenneth Anderson wrote: The Bank's rules, according to Zhang - and presumably he should be in a position to know as the Bank's number two manager - permitted "husbands and wives to work at the bank under circumscribed conditions, which he said he followed, but that...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The head of the World Bank brushed aside calls to quit on Wednesday and urged the United States and other rich countries to honor funding promises for a plan to help all the world's young children attend school. Paul Wolfowitz declined to comment on calls from some U.S. politicians for him to resign. A former head of a World Bank ethics panel said on Tuesday Wolfowitz broke staff rules when he intervened directly in the personnel matters of his girlfriend.

Reading some of the shrill comments posted online by World Bank staffers expressing (anonymously) their loathing for Paul Wolfowitz, you can understand why the bank president feels he has been the victim of a " smear campaign." But in taking the role of wounded victim, Wolfowitz seems blind to his own mistakes, which have had ruinous consequences for a great institution. Wolfowitz has failed at the World Bank not because his underlings were out to get him (though many probably were) but because he treated the organization itself as an enemy. He saw its professional staff as an impediment to...

Since the chief antagonist of Paul Wolfowitz on the matter of the settlement is Ad Melkert then head of the World Bank's Ethics Committee, readers might be interested in knowing what he is up to now. From the Inner City Press: UN sources continue to express surprise that Mr. Melkert's hiring of Eelco Keij, an operative from his political party, the Dutch Labor Party, has not triggered any formal review by UNDP or its Executive Board. And beyond direct personal conflicts of interest, these UN insiders enumerate Mr. Melkert's incongruous talk but no action on issues of ethics at UNDP...

May 02, 2007 The man going after Wolfowitz Clarice Feldman Since the chief antagonist of Paul Wolfowitz on the matter of the settlement is Ad Melkert then head of the World Bank's Ethics Committee, readers might be interested in knowing what he is up to now. From the Inner City Press: UN sources continue to express surprise that Mr. Melkert's hiring of Eelco Keij, an operative from his political party, the Dutch Labor Party, has not triggered any formal review by UNDP or its Executive Board. And beyond direct personal conflicts of interest, these UN insiders enumerate Mr. Melkert's incongruous...

UNITED NATIONS — With Washington critics increasingly directing their attacks at the management style of the World Bank's president, Paul Wolfowitz, a key figure in the battle over his post is the target of similar accusations. A former chairman of the World Bank's ethics committee, Ad Melkert, advised Mr. Wolfowitz on employing his girlfriend, who was serving as a top bank official when Mr. Wolfowitz became president. His advice, confirmed by documents released by the bank, has become a key component in the struggle over leadership of the World Bank, which has involved accusations that Mr. Wolfowitz's management style has...

Clarice Feldman Monday Shaha Riza and Paul Wolfowitz made their clearest most detailed and powerful statements to the World Bank. I was fortunate enough to be able to obtain in pdf format copies of their statements to share with American Thinker readers. Any errors in grammar or in transcription from the originals are my fault alone. Clarice Feldman SHAHA RIZA STATEMENT BOARD OF EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS, AD HOC COMMITTEE April 30,2007 I come before you today with my counsel, Victoria Toensing, at your request to assist you and the World Bank in resolving a problem that is not of my making....

FOR the past few weeks, the world has been riveted by the difficulties of Paul Wolfowitz, president of the World Bank, regarding a potential conflict of interest involving the salary of his partner, also a senior official there. With the bank’s board deliberating this week over how to handle the charges, the controversy now needlessly and regrettably threatens Mr. Wolfowitz’s presidency, which has been largely defined by his energetic support for a new Africa that is struggling to emerge. Over the last two years, Mr. Wolfowitz has effectively directed the bank’s energies toward fighting poverty and improving human life. He...

Sir Mark Malloch Brown, who recently stepped down as deputy secretary-general of the United Nations, has been appointed vice-chairman of his friend George Soros’s hedge fund company. Sir Mark will also serve as vice-chairman of the billionaire philanthropist’s Open Society Institute, which promotes democracy and human rights, particularly in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. In a letter to shareholders in his Quantum hedge funds, Mr Soros said Sir Mark would provide advice on a variety of issues to him and his two sons, who now run the company on a day-to-day basis. “With his extensive international contacts, Malloch...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz lashed back at critics Monday who he alleged were conducting a "smear campaign" against him and vowed he would not resign over what he termed unfair charges. In a statement to an investigating bank panel looking into whether he broke ethical and other rules in a pay-and-promotion deal he directed for his girlfriend, Wolfowitz said the treatment of the issue has become "circus like." Video More video Iraq war architect clings to his World Bank job amid a corruption probe. CNN's Zain Verjee reports (April 20) Play video "I, for one, would...

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz faces an "ad hoc committee" investigating his alleged ethics violations today, but it seems the committee has reached its conclusions even before he has a chance to defend himself. This fits the pattern of what is ever more clearly a Euro-railroad job. On Saturday, the Washington Post cited "three senior bank officials" as saying that the committee has "nearly completed a report" concluding that Mr. Wolfowitz "breached ethics rules when he engineered a pay raise for his girlfriend." The Post also reported that, "According to bank officials, the timing of the committee's report and its...

WASHINGTON: On the eve of what appeared likely to be an ugly showdown between Paul Wolfowitz, president of the World Bank, and the bank's board of directors, both sides were increasingly talking about trying to avert a confrontation that could cripple the bank and its mission of aiding poor countries. For a week at least, the bank's board has seemed determined to force Wolfowitz out on grounds that he showed favoritism to his companion, a bank employee, in giving her a raise and promotion when he became bank president in 2005. More recently, however, there has been talk at the...

As Paul Wolfowitz battles to keep his position as president of the World Bank after a nepotism scandal, speculation mounts that the U.S. may lose its hegemony over appointing the poverty-fighting institution's leader. More - that perhaps it should stop appointing Americans. The Wall Street Journal became the second publication of repute to suggest Stanley Fischer for the position. His isn't the first name the paper suggests, but it makes a case that he's unique, in being a non-American born American that the member coutries of the World Bank might find "less divisive". The first was the London-based weekly The...

It is hard to figure out what Paul Wolfowitz is telling himself as he wages an unseemly fight to hang on to his job as head of the World Bank. Any hope he had of reforming the bank has evaporated in the face of allegations of conflicts of interest and undeniably poor judgment. Any hope of expiating his sins for the disastrous Iraq war have also disappeared as once again he stubbornly denies reality and the damage that denial is causing to his reputation and to the bank’s ability to do its work. In the latest no-confidence clamor, some 40...