The White House softened its support for the embattled president of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz, just hours before he went before the bank’s board to argue that he should not be dismissed for arranging a promotion and pay hike for his girlfriend.

At a briefing for reporters, the White House press secretary, Tony Snow, reiterated President Bush’s general backing for Mr. Wolfowitz but also made vague references to a need for talks about the future of the bank.

“There are going to be conversations about how you move forward. And you talk about any possible options in the future about how to maintain the integrity and the effectiveness of the World Bank,” Mr. Snow said.

Mr. Snow said Mr. Bush’s view is that Mr. Wolfowitz had made mistakes but that none constituted “a firing offense.” However, the spokesman seemed to leave open the possibility that Mr. Wolfowitz might resign from the leadership of the development institution.

“Again, that’s something that he is going to have to resolve, or members of the bank are going to have to resolve. We support him,” Mr. Snow said.

Mr. Wolfowitz defended himself yesterday evening before a meeting of the bank’s 24-member board. The group was to consider an internal bank report that concluded that Mr. Wolfowitz violated the bank’s conflict-of-interest policies when he arranged a pay raise and placement at the State Department for girlfriend, Shaha Riza.

Mr. Wolfowitz has insisted that he thought he was following the instructions of a bank ethics panel when he made the arrangements, which were prompted by a bank policy against allowing staffers to be supervised by their spouses or domestic partners. The investigative report acknowledged that the advice “was not a model of clarity” but said it should have been obvious to Mr. Wolfowitz that it was improper for him to be involved in Ms. Riza’s personnel matters.

It was not immediately clear when the board might make a decision about Mr. Wolfowitz’s fate.

Allies of Mr. Wolfowitz said the drive to oust him stems from lingering animosity among left-leaning bank staffers and European diplomats about his role as an architect of the Iraq War while serving as deputy secretary of defense between 2001 and 2005.

“It absolutely is,” a former American ambassador to the United Nations, Andrew Young, said on PBS’s “NewsHour” last night. “For them to take their prejudices, which I agree with, against him on the war on Iraq and resurrect it to try to put into the World Bank political scene is in many ways obscene.”

Mr. Young said the notion that Mr. Wolfowitz arranged a lavish deal for Ms. Riza was absurd. “She’s a British woman who’s a Muslim, who’s fluent in Arabic, and in almost any corporation in the world, she could make a half a million dollars. She’s at the bank because of her competence,” the former U.N. ambassador said.

Mr. Young praised Mr. Wolfowitz’s efforts to refocus the bank on development in Africa.

“Wolfowitz was shaking up the World Bank in a way that it needed shaking,” the former ambassador said. “This is not about the girlfriend. … Staid bureaucrats who’ve been there 25 years bungling in the bank are trying to make him a scapegoat.”

European diplomats, led by the Dutch, have offered the Bush administration a deal under which Mr. Wolfowitz would leave the bank and be replaced by someone of Washington’s choosing.

A professor of international law at John Hopkins University, Ruth Wedgwood, said such an arrangement would shortchange other important groups, such as the countries where development projects take place. “If you want to give all constituencies some weight, people do have to talk to Africa, Asia, and Latin America, not just Europe,” she said.

Ms. Wedgwood said a number of the bank’s procedures for dealing with the complaints against Mr. Wolfowitz violate basic notions of due process. “One ought not to allow a statement to be made that, because it’s political, fairness doesn’t matter,” she said.

An international policy analyst in Washington, David Adesnik, said he endorsed Mr. Wolfowitz’s drive to strengthen anti-corruption programs. “So much development money is funneled to governments that don’t have the integrity to use it efficiently,” Mr. Adesnik said.

However, he added, that the same principle also requires the bank to be especially vigilant about allegations of nepotism. “One big issue at the bank is that so many people there come from countries where it’s a common practice to show favoritism to your family members,” the analyst said.