Wolfowitz Clashed Repeatedly With World Bank Staff

As the Riza controversy has escalated over the past week, Wolfowitz has suddenly been left fighting for his job amid uneven support, at best, from many of the bank's most powerful donor nations. The board has said it had no knowledge of the deal with Riza; Wolfowitz has publicly acknowledged making a "mistake" and has apologized.

The White House on Friday expressed President Bush's "full confidence" in Wolfowitz. Japanese Finance Minister Koji Omi, here for the bank's annual spring meeting of finance and development ministers this weekend, said, "I rate his work as World Bank president highly."

But French Finance Minister Thierry Breton, whose government has questioned Wolfowitz's leadership in the past, noted ominously that the bank is "special" because of its mission of helping the world's poor and that its "governance and ethics must obviously be impeccable."

"I fully trust the governing board to draw the consequences it must draw," Breton said.

Most ministers, including Omi, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Canada's Jim Flaherty, declined to comment directly on the Riza matter. All spoke of letting the executive board's "process" regarding Wolfowitz run its course.

Among African leaders, the emphasis Wolfowitz has placed on their continent's development has won him support. "He has been a visionary, absolutely supportive and responsive," said Antoinette M. Sayeh, finance minister of Liberia. "We have visionary leadership and steadfast progress under Mr. Wolfowitz, and we look forward to it continuing."

Zambian Finance Minister N'gandu Peter Magande cautioned against a rush to judgment. "We don't want to go back to old days in our jungles," he said. "We want to be sure that issues are dealt with correctly. It is not that we are being soft; we didn't come here to make a judgment on this issue."

Officials from several governments said any desire for Wolfowitz's departure would be carefully balanced against the need to preserve smooth bilateral ties with the United States and to avoid exacerbating a bad situation at the bank.

The board is unlikely to take the unprecedented step of firing Wolfowitz, a knowledgeable source said. "They could try to get the same result by making some statement to the effect that they're deeply disappointed that he misled them as to his role" in directing Riza's compensation.

In an e-mail to bank staff last night, Wolfowitz wrote: "Out of respect for the Board review process that has been underway, I have said little. I feel, however, that this has left a vacuum which has been largely filled by misleading information." The 109 pages of documents released by the board, he said, are "a lot to wade through looking for significant facts so I'd like to call your attention to a number of them."

He attached a selection of excerpts, most of them referring to his initial offer before assuming the presidency to recuse himself from dealings with Riza, and all of them favorable to himself. They did not include Barnett's subsequent clarification that the recusal officer did not include a ban on "professional contact."

He included a link to the complete package of documents, as did a posting on the bank's Web site yesterday.

Wolfowitz's initial appointment, made by tradition by the U.S. president, was controversial, largely because of his role in the administration's Iraq policy, which was opposed by most of the bank's contributing governments.

Some have said Wolfowitz is now being vilified as a proxy for Bush, and because his proposed reforms challenged the bank's entrenched status quo. But there is consensus, even among many of his supporters, that his actions over the past two years have given ammunition to those eager to find more reasons to dislike him.

"They were waiting for him to screw up, and he did," said a recently departed senior bank official.

Staff writer Krissah Williams contributed to this report.