World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz headed into a crunch meeting with restive bank directors yesterday, accused of peddling personal influence for his girlfriend and pursuing right-wing US policy goals.
At the meeting with a World Bank investigatory committee, the former Pentagon No. 2 was to plead his case over revelations that he ordered a huge pay package for his girlfriend at the bank, Shaha Riza.
The committee, drawn from the full board of 24 national representatives, is examining not just the Riza affair but his hiring of former White House aides to influential and highly paid jobs in his inner circle.
A report in the Washington Post on Saturday said the bank panel had already concluded that Wolfowitz breached ethics in engineering the pay raise for Riza, but remained locked in debate over whether to call explicitly for his resignation.
Wolfowitz was set to appear at yesterday's meeting with Riza and Robert Bennett, a prominent Washington lawyer who helped former president Bill Clinton settle a sexual harassment case in 1998.
"We want to make a presentation to them to show that this conflict-of-interest allegation is absolutely false," Bennett said, arguing that Wolfowitz was being "smeared" by opponents.
"They have some policy disputes with him and there are some international power issues," the high-powered lawyer said, referring to long-standing European suspicion of Wolfowitz.
The bank's hearing was to coincide with a Washington summit between US President George W. Bush and the EU, represented by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose members believe Wolfowitz is now a liability.
But propped up by declarations of "full confidence" from Bush, the neoconservative who played a starring role in the drive for war in Iraq had shown no sign of caving.
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