Canada, Others Advise U.S. On Wolfowitz Replacement
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America is asking Canada and other countries who should replace Paul Wolfowitz as the World Bank’s president, the Canadian finance minister, Jim Flaherty, said.
“It is happening,” Mr. Flaherty, 57, said before a meeting on Saturday of finance ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized nations near Potsdam, outside Berlin. “The U.S. is being consultative of Canada and other countries.”
Mr. Wolfowitz quit May 17, less than halfway through his five-year term, amid a furor over securing a pay raise for his companion. The White House bowed to pressure for his ouster from European governments, which said the former deputy defense secretary had hobbled the world’s largest development agency.
Mr. Flaherty and the German finance minister, Peer Steinbrück, said on Saturday that they back a convention allowing America to choose the World Bank’s next head. America has always picked the bank president, while the head of the International Monetary Fund is a European.
The list of possible successors includes Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt, 59; a former trade representative, Robert Zoellick, 53; and the director of the White House National Economic Council, Allan Hubbard, 59.
Mr. Kimmitt, representing Treasury Secretary Paulson at the G-8 meeting, said he was pleased by suggestions he could replace Mr. Wolfowitz and that it was “premature” to discuss names. “I’m flattered to have my name associated with a prestigious institution like the World Bank,” Mr. Kimmitt told reporters. “Any discussion of names at this point, mine or anyone else’s, is just speculation.”
Canada expects the next World Bank president will be an American appointed by America, Mr. Flaherty said at a press conference after the meeting. Mr. Flaherty said he and Mr. Paulson haven’t spoken by phone yet about specific names, and Canada doesn’t have a preference.
The G-8 ministers thanked Mr. Wolfowitz in a statement after the meeting for his service at the World Bank and his work on reducing poverty in Africa.
Mr. Flaherty said he disagreed with one of Mr. Steinbrück’s chief aims of the G-8 meeting, a move toward greater surveillance of hedge funds.
