WASHINGTON, Oct 3 (AFP) - World Bank President James Wolfensohn scolded world leaders here Sunday, faulting them for failing to make good on commitments to the poor and of holding regular meetings that yield little more than praise and blame.
"In today's world, we are not only national citizens but global citizens," Wolfensohn told the opening session of the annual general meeting of the Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
"Without greater visible engagement by global leadership, we will not make the breakthroughs we need to ensure real security and peace," he told ministers and central bank presidents from around the world, who are in Washington in their capacity as members of the IMF and World Bank board of governors.
"The way our system works today is that, at a sequence of global meetings, we agree on objectives. On everything from environmental goals, to the importance of gender equity, to education."
National governments then set out to meet the objectives, holding another meeting in five years.
"Usually the meeting concludes that we have not achieved our objectives. New targets are set. Blame and praise is attributed and we set out on the next five years."
While such gatherings are valuable, Wolfensohn said, "we are falling behind on the goals we have set. We need stronger leadership and we need more continuous engagement on the key global issues."
He recalled that at international conferences over the last three years -- in Doha, Monterrey and Johannesburg -- rich countries made promises on aid, trade and assistance and poor countries pledged to improve their governance and institutions.
But the world is nevertheless falling behind on a 2000 commitment to halve the proportion of the population living in poverty.
While that particular goal, thanks to China and India, will likely be reached, "we already know that most of other goals, for most countries, will not be met," Wolfensohn said.
"Africa in particular will be left far behind."
Elsewhere in his remarks, Wolfensohn, whose term as World Bank president ends next June, said that the danger in the world's preoccupation with the war on terrorism is that "we lose sight of the longer-term and equally urgent causes of our insecure world: poverty, frustration and lack of hope."
Citing his experience of having visited more than 100 countries in his 10 years as World Bank head, Wolfensohn said he found that poor people want security too.
"But they define it differently than we do. For them it is not about concrete barriers and military force. For them it is the chance to escape poverty."