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Gledam (moze samo ne gledam) nikoj ne obrna vnimanie na ova, a mene denot ne mi pocna bash merakliski koga ja slushnav ovaa nova brilijantna idea na Dablju.
March 16, 2005
Bush Chooses a Top Pentagon Aide to Head the World Bank
By ELIZABETH BECKER
and DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON, March 16 - President Bush said today that he would nominate Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense and one of the chief architects of the invasion of Iraq two years ago, to become president of the World Bank.
The announcement, coming on the heels of the appointment of John R. Bolton as the new American ambassador to the United Nations, was greeted with quiet anguish in those foreign capitals where the Iraq conflict and its aftermath remain deeply unpopular, and where Mr. Wolfowitz's drive to spread democracy around the world has been viewed with some suspicion.
In Washington, the appointment removes Mr. Wolfowitz from the president's inner circle and a skilled bureaucratic in-fighter from the Pentagon. It clears the way for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to take further control of Iraq policy, and opens the field for possible successors to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, whose future is a constant source of speculation in Washington.
The World Bank is the institution that allocates the resources and sets development policy for much of the third world, and Mr. Wolfowitz's appointment to succeed James D. Wolfensohn raises questions about whether Mr. Wolfowitz's ideological views will be reflected in development decisions. But as American ambassador to Indonesia from 1986 to 1989, Mr. Wolfowitz developed a passion for development and aid issues, and Mr. Bush said today that "Paul is committed to development," adding, "He's a compassionate, decent man who will do a fine job."
Despite the displeasure of some diplomats who had hoped that the administration would appoint a person without the almost radioactive reputation of a committed ideologue, they said that they expected Mr. Wolfowitz to receive the approval of the World Bank's board of directors in time for Mr. Wolfensohn's departure in May.
Announcing the appointment at a news conference at the White House this morning, Mr. Bush said he had already called various foreign leaders, including Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, to make the case that Mr. Wolfowitz would be a strong and effective leader at the World Bank, in part because of his experience managing the huge bureaucracy of the Pentagon.
Mr. Bush appeared expansive and almost light-hearted at the news conference, and he was clearly reveling in the developments in Lebanon and Iraq, where he asserted that democratization was on the rise. But he also, for the first time, made clear the limits of his patience with Iran - to which he extended modest new offers of American incentives last week to give up its nuclear program. He said it had only one chance to take the deal he had offered along with France, Germany and Britain.
Iran, he said, "must permanently abandon enrichment and reprocessing" of nuclear material, a step the Iranians have so far insisted they will not take. "The understanding is we go to the Security Council if they reject the offer," he said. "And I hope they don't."
Yet he set no timelines, and said at the end of his news conference that "there's a certain patience required in order to achieve a diplomatic objective."
Mr. Bush also defended his administration's policy of "rendering" terror suspects to nations that have been suspected of using torture, saying that he was never knowingly allowing anyone to be sent abroad so that they could be subject to interrogation techniques not permitted in the United States. The United States sends suspects "back to their country of origin with the promise that they won't be tortured," he said. "That's the promise we receive. This country does not believe in torture." But then, almost as an aside, he added: "We do believe in protecting ourselves."
He also left open the door, as he did on Tuesday, for Hezbollah to enter Lebanese politics. But he did not budge on the question of labeling it a terror organization. "Hezbollah is on the terrorist list for a reason, and remains on the terrorist list for a reason," he said. "Our position has not changed on Hezbollah."
He said he had appointed his longtime aide from Texas, Karen Hughes, to run the State Department's public diplomacy operation because her strength was communicating a strong message.
"It is very important for us to have a message that counteracts some of the messages coming out of some of the Arab media, some of it coming out, partly, because of our strong and unwavering friendship with Israel," President Bush said. "You know, Israel is an easy target for some of the media in the Middle East, and if you're a friend of Israel, you become a target."
Mr. Wolfowitz is also likely to be a target - especially in the Mideast, where he ranks among Israel's strongest defenders in the administration, and because of his Iraq policies.
"We'll have to swallow Wolfowitz like we swallowed John Bolton, since this is what we now know the administration means by effective multilaterialism," said a foreign diplomat here who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Some officials within the World Bank said today that they hoped Mr. Wolfowitz would follow the model of another famous former defense secretary, Robert S. McNamara, who took over the bank after orchestrating the early years of the Vietnam War. At the bank, Mr. McNamara became an advocate of the poor, and was later credited with moving the mission of the bank to find innovative ways to help the world's most impoverished nations.
By tradition, the United States names the president of the World Bank while Europe is allowed to chose the head of the International Monetary Fund, the other organization within the United Nations family that together with the World Bank determines international economic and financial policy. Most developing countries want this tradition to change.
A former dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Mr. Wolfowitz has a doctorate in international relations and was ambassador to Indonesia as well as a ranking State Department official under President Reagan. Those are qualifications that most of the other candidates considered for the job had been lacking. Moreover, Mr. Wolfowitz also has the ear of President Bush.
Mr. Wolfensohn, who was part of the consultations that led to the choice of Mr. Wolfowitz, had high praise for him as his potential successor, saying in a statement that he is "person of high intellect, integrity and broad experience both in the public and private sectors and has qualifications that would be critical to leading the Bank Group."
Timothy Carney, a retired ambassador and career diplomat who served under Mr. Wolfowitz in Indonesia and Iraq, said that Mr. Wolfowitz "will bring experience in the developing world, enormous energy and intellect, and a willingness to listen to divergent views to the World Bank."
"The downside," said Mr. Carney, "might be that it takes him too long to change his mind when he finds out he is wrong."
Key among the concerns of his critics is Mr. Wolfowitz' reputation for pursuing an ideological agenda. Several officials said they feared that he would use his position as World Bank president to focus on the Middle East and his notion of democratization, rather than continue the current emphasis on Africa and poverty reduction through a variety of new tests, including the policing of corruption and heavy spending on education instead of the military.
Among antipoverty advocates, the announcement was treated with almost universal disdain.
"As the most prominent advocate of imposing the U.S.'s will on the world, the architect of the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq, this appointment signals to developing countries that the U.S. is just as serious about imposing its will on borrowers from the World Bank as on the countries of the Middle East," said Njoki Njoroge Njehu, director of the 50 Years is Enough Network, which opposes most of the World Bank's policies. |