Bush Nominates Wolfowitz for World Bank

President George Bush yesterday chose one of the most controversial figures in his administration, the Pentagon's chief ideological proponent of the Iraq war Paul Wolfowitz, to head the World Bank.

The selection of Mr Wolfowitz, who as deputy defence secretary was a prime mover of the president's decision to go to war, was greeted with incredulity in Europe and the development community, and by Democrats in Washington.

"It's a very surprising and in many ways an inappropriate nomination," said Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University economist and economic adviser to the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan.

"Hundreds of millions of people depend for their lives and livelihood on the efforts of professionals to fight extreme poverty," he said, adding that he was speaking as a development expert and not as a United Nations official.

Mr Bush tried to beat back some of the criticism yesterday, telephoning world leaders to lobby for his choice.

"Paul is committed to development. He is a compassionate, decent man who will do a fine job at the World Bank," he told a press conference.

But despite a stint as US ambassador to Indonesia, Mr Wolfowitz is not widely known as an expert on poverty.

At 61, he has spent much of his career at the Pentagon, where he was seen as more cerebral but more ideological than the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.

In Washington his nomination was widely seen as an attempt by Mr Bush to make changes at the Pentagon and repair some of the damage caused by the Iraq war.

Two other senior Pentagon officials, the hawkish undersecretary for policy Douglas Feith, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Richard Myers, are also stepping down this year.

Mr Wolfowitz is inextricably linked with the greatest disasters of the war.

These range from his conviction that Saddam Hussein had a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction to his upbeat assessments on the eve of the invasion that controlling Iraq would be a straightforward task and his insistence to Congress that the war and Iraq's reconstruction would be financed by oil exports.

His nomination, which must be approved by the bank's members, is the president's second to raise hackles in the international community.

Earlier this month he named John Bolton, a state department hawk hostile to the UN, as his UN ambassador. Mr Wolfowitz carries different baggage, as the neo-conservative intellectual who helped translate theories on pre-emptive action into the reality of war.

He will be hard pressed to succeed the Australian-born James Wolfensohn, who steps down on June 1.

A choice this controversial was bound to bring calls for an end to Washington's traditional right to choose the bank's chief.

"There is an urgent need to reform the selection process: governments should abolish the unspoken 'gentlemen's agreement' whereby the US picks the bank president," Oxfam said yesterday.

"The president should be chosen through an open and transparent selection process, strictly on the basis of their merits and their capacity to do the job."