Sour Over Her Sweetheart Deal

By Al Kamen
Friday, May 18, 2007

With Paul Wolfowitz leaving as president of the World Bank, the speculation now turns to whether Shaha Riza, the femme part of the Rizawitz combo, is ready to come back to her old job.

There can be no doubt she's furious about how she has been treated by the World Bank -- being forced to take a leave, staying on the bank's hideously cushy payroll, and having to endure enormous pay raises and promotions -- all because Wolfowitz wanted to be head of the bank.

In her April 30 deposition to an ad hoc committee looking into the situation, Riza seemed to be seething.

"We especially appreciate" your coming, lead committee member Herman Wijffels began, "because we understand how painful this whole episode must be for you."

"Do you?" she said.

Wijffels assured her he did. Riza explained her recollection of events back in 2005, when Wolfowitz came to the bank.

"And you know something, I kept on wondering: If I had been a man, would it have happened to me?" she said. "If it was just the opposite, would it have happened to me? And why is it the woman is always the one who has to leave?

"And I was fighting for that. I was fighting -- I'm a single mother. I am the one who takes care of my son. I don't have a man taking care of me."

On several occasions she noted that there were other couples working at the bank and that some wives of high-ranking officials were not required to leave their jobs, and she said that it would have been nice if a bank official could have "at least explained to me why I was being treated in a different way to all other spouses in this place."

"Or maybe," she continued, "I was wondering, maybe because they're married, they're seeing that their relationships are asexual. But because I'm dating, there must be sex there."

Uh, moving right along, Wijffels asked: "Did you consult with" Wolfowitz, "either directly or indirectly, concerning the . . . terms you proposed to" the bank's personnel chief?

"If you think I'm angry now," she responded, "you should see me angry then. No, of course not, because I thought he should have fought the decision by the ethics committee. He became them, you, the bank, and I had to fend for myself exactly the same way I'm fending for myself now."

Lest anyone think Riza is some shrinking violet, there's this from the deposition of Robin Cleveland, the former Office of Management and Budget official Wolfowitz brought over to be his chief of staff. Cleveland is widely known as one tough costumer in her own right.

"Did you yourself talk to Ms. Riza on the whole issue while this negotiation was going on?" Wijffels asked her.

"I'm confident that I was on the receiving end of a lot of yelling," Cleveland recalled. "Whether or not I would characterize that as a conversation, I can't say."

Leading by Staying Home

Remember that $2.3 million Iraqi Young Leaders Exchange Program, launched by the State Department last year to foster goodwill and to teach Iraqi kids how to get along and be good citizens?

The idea was to bring about 100 Iraqi high school students over this summer to "learn about the United States, to develop their leadership skills, and to develop friendships," the program announcement said.

Three international student-exchange organizations divvied up the program grants and started working on recruitment. But it seems there's going to be a bit of a delay, most likely to next summer, because of apparently unforeseen security problems and especially because of passport problems.

The Iraqis, moving to a new passport system, have shut down their passport office, according to Peter Simpson, program director for one of the grantees, World Learning.

Another problem is that all the kids would be required to go to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad -- not just once, but twice -- to get visas. The waits for visas also can be lengthy, and those trips could be quite dangerous if people who are not huge fans of the United States were to find out who was signing up.

There was some discussion of just bringing students over from Kurdistan or perhaps recruiting from among Iraqi refugees in Jordan, where they would have safe access to the U.S. Embassy in Amman. Washington nixed those alternatives.

If the students safely obtain passports, there's also a concern that recruiting students from all regions and ethnic groups in Iraq might lead to tension or fighting among them when they got to the States.

Well, let's hope the programs, which have experience dealing with ethnic tensions, keep the peace. Of course, there might be some trouble when they get back and people find out where they've been.

A State Department official acknowledged the delay but said: "It will happen. It's going forward. We're recruiting in country, and we're hopeful that we'll be able to work through the procedural issues."

The postponement might be "something of a blessing," Simpson said, in that it helps ensure time to recruit a diverse group of Iraqis.

As for safety concerns, the key, according to an e-mail circulating at one grantee, is to make sure everyone recruited is told right up front about the "the risk factors that we know about (including the fact that they may be photographed with President Bush and that their photos may be published.)."

Now there's a nifty idea.

Quid Pro Dough?

Headline of the week . . . from the Associated Press on a story from Tokyo: "Landlocked Laos to join whaling commission, likely to support Tokyo's campaign."

The Laotians, not known to eat much whale, are expected to be strong supporters of Japan's drive to lift the moratorium on commercial whaling. The announcement came after a meeting between top Japanese and Laotian officials during which the Japanese announced a $1 million aid program for removal of buried unexploded bombs in Laos.

A Laotian official said there was no connection joining the International Whaling Commission and the million bucks.

Of course not. Who would have thought that?