World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz told an investigatory panel on Monday he is the victim of a ”smear campaign” aimed at forcing him to resign, as he gained renewed support from United States President George Bush.
Wolfowitz told the World Bank panel he will not quit in the face of a ”bogus charge”, as he defended himself against allegations he improperly pushed a generous bank pay deal for his girlfriend.
In a meeting with an investigatory committee, the former Pentagon number two pleaded his case over the firestorm linked to the pay deal for his girlfriend, Shaha Riza.
Meanwhile, Bush renewed his support to Wolfowitz at a White House press conference, saying he thinks the World Bank chief ”ought to stay” in his post.
The bank committee, drawn from the full board of 24 representatives, is examining not just the Riza affair, but also Wolfowitz’s hiring of former White House aides to influential, and highly paid, jobs in his inner circle.
A report in the Washington Post on Saturday said the bank panel had already concluded that Wolfowitz breached ethics in engineering the pay raise for Riza, but remained locked in debate over whether to call explicitly for his resignation.
Wolfowitz signalled his intention to fight the charges against him. ”The goal of this smear campaign, I believe, is to create a self-fulfilling prophecy that I am an ineffective leader and must step down for that reason alone,” he said in a statement also released to the media.
”I, for one, will not give into such tactics. And, I will not resign in the face of a plainly bogus charge of conflict of interest.”
Wolfowitz was flanked at the meeting by Robert Bennett, a prominent Washington lawyer who helped former president Bill Clinton settle a sexual harassment case in 1998.
Bennett said ahead of the meeting that the allegations against his client are ”absolutely false”.
”They have some policy disputes with him and there are some international power issues,” the lawyer had said, referring to long-standing European suspicion of Wolfowitz.
The hearing coincided with a Washington summit between Bush and the European Union, represented by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose members believe Wolfowitz is now a liability.
Wolfowitz told the panel he acted in good faith in the Riza case, on the advice of the bank’s ethics committee, in trying to resolve a potential conflict of interest between himself and Riza after he became president in June 2005.
But officials contend that he was never directed personally to order guaranteed promotions and a pay deal worth nearly $200 000 for his Libyan-born companion when she was reassigned from the bank to work at the US State Department.
Wolfowitz contradicted such claims, telling the panel that the World Bank’s ethics committee had instructed him in clear terms to implement his girlfriend’s promotion and pay hikes.
”The agreement reached with Ms Riza was in line with other World Bank settlement agreements and was consistent with the goals that the ethics committee set out for treating her fairly,” Wolfowitz said.
He also said that hundreds of World Bank staffers, employed at the bank’s Washington headquarters, earn more than Riza, a communications specialist.
Critics have pointed out that Riza ended up being paid more than Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her stint at the State Department, but Wolfowitz said ”hundreds of them earn more than the US Secretary of State”.
He said the pay range of other bank staffers at Riza’s pay grade was between $132 000 and $232 000, tax-free.
Critics say the World Bank’s credibility is being shredded, not least over a campaign spearheaded by Wolfowitz to root out corruption. — Sapa-AFP