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3 Wolfowitz postings went to war
backers By Emad Mekay and Jim
Lobe
WASHINGTON - Of the top five outside
international appointments made by embattled World
Bank President Paul Wolfowitz during his nearly
two-year tenure, three were senior political
appointees of right-wing governments that provided
strong backing for US policy in Iraq.
The
latest appointment came just last month when
former Jordanian Deputy Prime Minister Marwan
Muasher was named
senior vice president for
external affairs.
Muasher served as King
Abdullah's ambassador in Washington in the runup
to the Iraq war in 2002 and reportedly played a
key role in ensuring Amman's cooperation in the
March 2003 invasion.
During and after the
invasion, when he served first as foreign minister
and then as deputy prime minister, he was
considered among Washington's staunchest
supporters in an increasingly hostile Arab world.
Muasher's appointment came nine months
after Wolfowitz named former Spanish foreign
minister Ana Palacio as the bank's senior vice
president and general counsel. As foreign
minister, she was an outspoken proponent of the
US-led Iraq invasion, to which her government, led
by former prime minister Jose Maria Aznar,
contributed 1,500 troops.
Also in June
2006, Wolfowitz named former Salvadoran finance
minister Juan Jose Daboub as one of the bank's two
managing directors. In addition to his financial
post, Daboub served as chief of staff to former
president Francisco Flores when, as a charter
member of the US-led "Coalition of the Willing",
he sent nearly 400 Salvadoran combat troops to
Iraq, more than any other developing country.
Wolfowitz is currently fending off growing
calls, particularly from bank staff,
non-government organizations and a number of
former senior bank officials, for his resignation
over charges that he improperly negotiated a
promotion and compensation package for his
romantic partner, career bank staffer Shaha Riza,
who was subsequently seconded to the State
Department.
Wolfowitz, who became the
bank's president in June 2005, has long insisted
that his own role as deputy defense secretary
under President George W Bush, in which he was a
key architect of the Iraq war, would never
influence his decisions at the bank.
As
recently as last Thursday, as finance and
development ministers began gathering in
Washington for the annual spring meetings of the
bank and its sister institution, the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), Wolfowitz again denied that
his connection to the Iraq war has played any role
in his work at the bank and suggested that the
calls by staff for him resign were motivated at
least in part by anti-war sentiment.
"For
people who disagree with things they associate
with me in my previous job," he said, "I am not in
my previous job."
But persistent efforts
by Wolfowitz to recruit a new country manager for
Iraq despite concerns over staff security there -
as well as the bank's attempts last month to
suppress reports about an incident in which a bank
employee was injured in Baghdad, apparently to
avoid derailing his recruitment efforts - have
lent credence to critics' charges that he has been
more than eager to line up the institution and its
resources behind US policy there.
The fact
that Wolfowitz also took with him to the bank
several key right-wing Republican aides - none
with any development experience - who had worked
closely with him on Iraq-related issues while he
was at the Pentagon - also bolstered that
impression.
There have been reports of
elaborate off-the-record efforts on Wolfowitz's
part, during his tenure at the bank, to persuade
prominent journalists that the administration's
pre-war allegations of an operational link between
Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda were
indeed true.
It is in that context that
Wolfowitz's appointments of non-Americans who were
not already working for the bank to top posts
appear significant.
"I believe that Paul
Wolfowitz has used his tenure in part to reward
those governments and individuals who were
particularly helpful to the US in the Iraq War,"
said Steven Clemens, director of the American
Strategy Program of the New America Foundation,
who has closely followed Wolfowitz's career on his
much-read blog, www.thewashingtonnote.com.
"To me, that's a completely irresponsible
approach to managing one of the world's most
important economic development institutions," he
added.
Since taking the reins, Wolfowitz
has made five senior non-US outside appointments
at the bank. In addition to Muasher, Palacio and
Daboub, they include Vincenzo La Via, a former
Italian finance ministry official who serves as
the bank's chief financial officer, and Lars
Thunell, a Swede who serves as executive vice
president of the bank's International Finance
Corporation, a post for which the bank president
traditionally defers to the choice of the bank's
major European donors.
In contrast to the
last two, Muasher, Palacio and Daboub were all
political appointees in governments that strongly
backed the Bush administration on Iraq and on
other issues. Daboub was a senior
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