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Wolfowitz Panel Finds Ethics Breach, Officials Say
World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz is to defend his actions on Monday.
(By Manuel Balce Ceneta -- Associated Press)
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"This ties up the board for an extended period of time while they get to the bottom of this," one official said.
But Bennett, Wolfowitz's attorney, asserted that that strategy would ultimately backfire. "The board, through these unreasonable and unfair actions, can't create a fake crisis and say he has to leave because he's hurting the bank," Bennett said. "They're the ones who are hurting the bank. Even those people opposed to Mr. Wolfowitz will see how outrageous this is."
Monday was also shaping up as a test of the board's will on a controversial new bank strategy on health, nutrition and population.
In recent months, World Bank employees have shaped the strategy, which directs the institution's lending, to include the ready availability of "sexual and reproductive health services" for women in poor countries. That bit of jargon is widely known in some countries to refer, among other things, to access to safe and legal abortions.
But in recent weeks, Juan José Daboub, a conservative Christian whom Wolfowitz appointed managing director at the bank, directed the staff to delete that reference, effectively eliminating the endorsement for access to safe abortions, according to two bank officials. Daboub did not return calls.
In a letter sent last week to the bank vice president overseeing the strategy, several members of the governing board, including those representing Germany, France and Britain, demanded that the original language be restored, asserting that the bank would otherwise be breaking with a 1994 consensus embracing family planning.
This week, the American representative on the board, Eli Whitney Debevoise II, pressed again to remove the reference to "services" and replace it with "care," to eliminate any potential endorsement for abortion, the officials said. Debevoise did not return phone calls.
On Monday, as the committee huddles with Wolfowitz to discuss his leadership, the board is scheduled to vote on the final health strategy, officials said.
