America

Debate rises on World Bank chief succession: report

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-05-20 08:59

The departure of Paul D. Wolfowitz as World Bank president is prompting calls around the world to revoke the traditional right of the United States to select the institution's leader, The Washington Post reported Saturday.

As the White House asserted its claims on picking Wolfowitz's successor, the report said, aid groups and former bank officials demanded that the next president be selected not in deference to the Bush administration, but on professional merit.

It said that advocacy groups and development experts took aim at an unwritten rule that has for six decades governed the financial institutions created in the aftermath of World War II: the U.S. president picks the World Bank chief, and Europe selects the head of its affiliate institution, the International Monetary Fund.

"Paul Wolfowitz's problems at the World Bank stem in part from a widespread perception that he disproportionately represents U.S. interests rather than objectives that command a global consensus," said a letter signed this week by more than 200 people, including heads of aid organizations, and sent to the executive boards of the World Bank and the IMF, according to the report.

The letter called for the traditional arrangement to be " abandoned and replaced with selection procedures that reflect two key principles: transparency of process, and competence of prospective leadership without regard to national origin."

Wolfowitz, forced out after weeks of ethical controversy, on Friday assured the bank's executive board he would have little to do with the institution from now to June 30, when his resignation takes effect, the report said.

The World Bank is not a bank in the conventional sense. It is a vast, global development program financed by wealthier countries that pumps billions of dollars into the economies of poor countries every year, either as low-interest loans or grants.

Bank money finances programs ranging from schools to hospitals to mosquito nets that guard against malaria, and it has historically been a lifeline in some of the world's poorest places.