WASHINGTON - US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz denied Friday he would be doing Washington`s bidding if confirmed as the next president of the World Bank.
"I am not the American executive director at the World Bank," he said in an interview with the Financial Times.
"I would be the president of the World Bank and I`ve got to try to bring all those different views together, those different visions together to shape a common approach," Wolfowitz was quoted as saying.
President George W. Bush announced Wednesday that he wanted Wolfowitz to succeed James Wolfensohn in the top job in international development, despite his role as a prime architect of the war in Iraq.
Analysts say European governments appear resigned to Wolfowitz`s appointment, but many campaign groups fear he will use his influential new post to further a neoconservative foreign policy vision.
The 61-year-old former diplomat and academic addressed critics of his nomination. "I think I can persuade them that they can work with me and I think I can work with them.
"If I am chosen to be the president then I would view my job as trying to pull together the strongest possible consensus to get the thing done."
During his decade-long stint, Wolfensohn has reoriented the World Bank`s focus into backing education and health policies in the developing world rather than major infrastructure projects.
Wolfowitz told the Financial Times that he would continue Wolfensohn`s approach.
"First of all, I need to preserve the commitment to its mission of reducing poverty, which is one of the greatest moral challenges of our time. It is not the only one but it is the World Bank`s challenge," he said.
Wolfowitz also stressed the importance of fighting corruption and promoting transparency and accountability.
"The problems that we are talking about are so complex that there is nobody who is smart enough to know everything you need to know about them or to have weighed all the pros and cons adequately," he said.
Wolfowitz said he would come to controversies in development policy with an open mind.
One involves the Bush administration`s desire for the World Bank to extend more grants rather than loans to poor countries, which some in Europe and at the Bank itself fear would encourage profligacy.
Wolfowitz added that he would not be going to the World Bank "to escape controversy".
"It is a real regret that I am giving up a very important job that I still find incredibly rewarding and incredibly important. But ... I have been offered an opportunity to contribute in a different way at an even higher level."
03/18/2005 15:32 GMT