White House in Last Ditch Effort to Save Wolfowitz
Reuters confirms allegations of stalling tactics
The White House this morning launched an extraordinary last minute effort to save Paul Wolfowitz by attempting to prevent the distribution of the long-awaited report of the Ad Hoc Committee.
The report is expected to contain overwhelming evidence, in the form of testimony and notes from Xavier Coll, the Bank's head of human resources, that Wolfowitz deliberately and knowingly broke Bank rules.
Eli Whitney Debevoise, the U.S. Executive Director, asked Monday morning that the report not be circulated to Board members this morning as planned, in order that President George Bush might reach G7 Finance Ministers by telephone to discuss the matter.
Bush was rebuffed in his requests for a teleconference and instead had White House staff call members of the Bank's Executive Board in a desperate attempt to secure their support for Wolfowitz, prior to their seeing the full report and Coll evidence.
The report was finally transmitted to Board members at 1pm today. The board is understood to be meeting later Monday evening. A number of Board chairs are said to be pressing for full disclosure of the report later tonight.
Meanwhile, Wolfowitz's lawyer, Robert Bennett, will be providing journalists with copies of Wolfowitz's response this afternoon. Wolfowitz is due to address the board Tuesday afternoon. The release of his testimony ahead of time ensures that his arguments will dominate Tuesday's news cycle as the Ad Hoc Committee's report, with Coll's testimony and notes, is not available.
G7 Finance Ministers are due to meet in Potsdam, Germany on May 18-19, 2007. U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is understood not to be attending.
3 comments:
Since when has any world leader / G8 Minister "rebuffed" a request to set up a teleconference with the President of the United States?
Then an attempt to secure the support of the EDs BEFORE they see the full report?
American credibility and belief in the rule of law (or 'process') has been taken to a new low by the White House.
This is nearly as bad as the UN Briefing given by Powell about Iraq's WMD threat.
Once again, American prestige and credibility has been abused and damaged by the White House.
It is tough living in a world without communists or terrorists to blame for America's troubles.
Hugo Chavez is right when he said that the WB is only a tool for the U.S.A.
No matter how one skins the cat, one can't ignore the blatant truth of coercion by the mediocre politicians of the supreme US of A :-(
One man can not be more important than a whole institution. The very credibility of the World Bank and the mission it is pushing to fight poverty and shun corruption can not be sustained with Wolfowitz at the helm. The Bank needs to regain the moral high ground. The best thing Wolfowitz can ever do for the Bank, if he really cares about it is to go quietly!
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