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PAUL Wolfowitz is a good man brought down by a shabby, politicised witch-hunt. The terms under which he was forced to deal with his partner when he joined the World Bank may well indicate that he was set up for a fall. Wolfowitz tried hard to avoid personnel issues surrounding his partner. He sought advice, and followed it. The spouses of other executives had been allowed to keep working at the bank but the hostility to Wolfowitz, which is a displaced enmity for US President George W.Bush, exacerbated by Wolfowitz's exotic name and reputation as an architect of the operation...

Tony Blair may be asked to head the World Bank after its president quit in a sleaze row. One of America’s top economists today revealed that the retiring prime minister is being considered as a replacement for disgraced Paul Wolfowitz. Nobel prize-winner Joe Stiglitz, a former senior vice president at the World Bank, said: "He is one of the people that is clearly being discussed." Mr Blair is expected to cash in on his international contacts after quitting Downing Street on 27 June and his agent said he would quit as an MP if "a big international job" came up....

As he prepared to assume the World Bank presidency in the spring of 2005, Paul D. Wolfowitz reached out to the bank's skeptical senior managers. In informal meetings, he took copious notes and asked respectful questions. He knew they had doubts about him, Wolfowitz said, not least because of his role in designing the Iraq war. But he told them that he was committed to the bank's goal of reducing world poverty, that he would learn from them and rely on their guidance. According to several attendees, they were won over by his humility. "I went back and reported to...

Perhaps his fate was inevitable. “Could ‘the architect of Iraq’ ever be accepted by staff?” John Briscoe, the bank's country director for Brazil, asked in a recent letter to his colleagues. “The answer is probably no.” A poll by the Staff Association showed 92% opposed his appointment. That suggested “an organised hostility” from the bank's cadres that would always be hard to overcome, Mr Briscoe argues.

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WASHINGTON - Embattled World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz is negotiating an agreement to resign, according to an official familiar with the talks. His departure would include an acknowledgment from the bank that he doesn't bear sole responsibility for the controversy surrounding a generous pay package for his girlfriend, the official said. The negotiations were taking place as the bank's board resumed deliberations over Wolfowitz's fate Wednesday afternoon. The official said Wolfowitz wanted the bank to accept some responsibility for conflicts of interest cited against him by a special bank panel. It was not clear whether the bank's 24-member board would...

World Bank Scholar Paul Wolfowitz's judges may have ethical issues of their own. BY BRET STEPHENS Thursday, May 17, 2007 12:01 a.m. In the winter of 2006 an email was sent to the investigations hotline of the World Bank's Department of Institutional Integrity, or INT. Its subject was the "Hypocrisy of ED Tom Scholar." "Please know," read the text of the email written by a bank employee, "that UK ED Tom Scholar is continuing an affair with [a bank employee]. This woman has been given preferential treatment in [the department] because of her relationship with this powerful ED, this affair...

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz will not resign under the current "cloud" and would rather push the matter to a vote of the bank's board to clear his name, his lawyer said on Wednesday. "Mr. Wolfowitz will not resign under this cloud and he will rather put this matter to a full vote," Wolfowitz's lawyer, Robert Bennett, told Reuters.

For the past few weeks the Bush administration has been bitterly divided over the best way to respond to growing calls for Paul Wolfowitz’s resignation as World Bank president, according to people who have attended the White House meetings. On Tuesday, Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, signalled an apparent change in the White House’s previously firm backing for Mr Wolfowitz when he said “all options are on the table”. But according to the White House insiders, one of those options still included Mr Wolfowitz staying on. The Bush administration is divided into three camps, which have very rarely seen...

WASHINGTON, May 16 (Reuters) - The World Bank's board is negotiating details of Paul Wolfowitz's exit as bank president, board sources said on Wednesday following pressure by European countries over his handling of a promotion for his companion. "They have resumed the meeting and are finalizing a deal," one of the board sources told Reuters after an adjournment of a board meeting earlier at the request of the United States. The board sources from developed and developing countries said details of a package, including financial compensation, were being discussed with Wolfowitz's lawyer. Under a contract he signed in 2005 when...

IN ANY normal work situation, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz might have been shown the door a long time ago. Imagine if a review panel had come to the following conclusions about your job performance: -- You had displayed "questionable judgment and a preoccupation with self-interest over institutional best interest." -- You saw yourself "as the outsider to whom the established rules and standards did not apply." -- Your actions "had had a dramatic negative impact on the reputation and credibility" of your employer. -- You had displayed "a lack of understanding and disregard for the interests of the institution."...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Paul Wolfowitz made an emotional appeal to stay on as World Bank president in a last pitch before the bank's board decides whether he has the credibility to lead the poverty-fighting institution. The U.S. government failed to rally support among its key allies for a strategy aimed at saving Wolfowitz his job, even as a bank panel found that he violated ethics rules. Wolfowitz remained defiant as he appeared before the 24-nation board, which will resume a meeting on Wednesday to decide his fate in a scandal over a pay and promotion deal he approved in 2005...

The White House, shifting its stance, said Tuesday that "all options are on the table" about who should lead the World Bank, even as it defended embattled President Paul Wolfowitz. ..."We have faith in Paul Wolfowitz," White House spokesman Tony Snow said. He insisted that the charges against Wolfowitz are not "a firing offense." Only after the charges against Wolfowitz are resolved, he said, would it then be appropriate to consider the bank's leadership going forward. "Separately, at some point in the future there are going to be conversations about the proper stewardship of the World Bank," Snow said. "In...

The angry comments attributed to Mr Wolfowitz came from damning testimony by Xavier Coll, head of human resources at the bank, who provided investigators with his notes of a meeting with Mr Wolfowitz last year. The notes directly contradict Mr Wolfowitz's assertions that the details of Ms Riza's treatment were properly shared with senior bank officials. In March last year, when a mention of Ms Riza's secondment outside the bank to avoid rules about partners was first published in the magazine US News & World Report, an angry Mr Wolfowitz accused Mr Coll of leaking the information. According to Mr...

What actually happened in the summer of 2005 has now been mostly obscured under the lobbying and partisanship that has buffetted Paul Wolfowitz and his presidency of the World Bank in recent weeks. But yesterday's report by a panel of seven World Bank executives, the so-called "Ad Hoc Group", claimed to present a version of events that was based on "a strong and largely undisputed documentary record". Its conclusions were as follows: He violated the code of conduct The code of conduct for board officials at the World Bank requires members to "avoid any conflict of interest, real or apparent"....

Late yesterday afternoon, without prior notice to Paul Wolfowitz, the World Bank's Executive Committee released the Final Report of the Ad Hoc Group on his handling of personnel issues affecting his companion Shaha Riza. It is a highly damaging, utterly biased account of the events and the nature of the release-designed to give his detractors first crack at the news while handicapping him in his capacity to respond. Yet it is par for the course in a matter which has been characterized by false accusations, unfair treatment and selected manipulation of the press by those members of the Bank and...

The World Bank board meets today to consider the fate of President Paul Wolfowitz, and the truth is that the verdict may already be in. The board will consider the report of an investigating committee dominated by the same European nations that have been orchestrating the media campaign to depose him. As almost daily newspaper leaks have disclosed for weeks--in violation of bank rules--the committee concludes that Mr. Wolfowitz violated bank rules in awarding a promotion and salary increase for his girlfriend, Shaha Riza. We've previously reported on the World Bank documents that make it clear this was at worst...

WASHINGTON -- The kerfuffle over whether Paul Wolfowitz, the World Bank's president, behaved badly regarding the contract for his companion to facilitate her departure from the bank involves no large issue. The bank's existence does. The bank's rationale, never strong, has evaporated. Born in 1944, at the apogee of confidence in governments and international governmental organizations, the bank's mission is "to fight poverty with passion and professionalism." The great prerequisite for curing poverty is, however, economic growth, and the world has learned that the prerequisite for growth is free markets allocating private capital to efficient uses. Much of what recipient...

At some point even a sole superpower must recognise reality. Hopes for an effective presidency of the World Bank by Paul Wolfowitz are over. He must either go or be the lame-duck president of a deeply damaged institution. The special panel established to investigate Mr Wolfowitz's behaviour towards the re-assignment of his girlfriend has concluded that he violated rules governing conflict of interest. Mr Wolfowitz's lawyer demands sufficient time to prepare a rebuttal. This request should be granted to remove suggestions of a lack of due process. But if this concession is granted, the administration must accept the legitimacy of...

At the start of this week, European officials signaled that they'd had enough of World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz's dragging down the good name of the fine institution. It's only taken them two years to get on top of the situation, assemble a panel and offer Wolfowitz a deal if he steps down after it was revealed that he violated World Bank rules by rigging a raise and a promotion for his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, in 2005. For the past month, these violations have hit the media, and cries for his resign have grown into slightly louder cries. The man...