Liz suggests

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Wolfowitz must stay

Wednesday, 9th May 2007

The Wall Street Journal has a splendid editorial on the Wolfowitz affair, and takes a welcome opportunity to give a kicking to one of his leading adversaries, Mark Malloch Brown - Kofi Annan's former deputy at the UN and a man who is everything that is wrong with such inter-governmental bodies made flesh:

Mr. Malloch Brown warned on Monday that, if Mr. Wolfowitz stayed as president, European countries might withhold funding from the next financing round for the bank's International Development Association. We hope he's right, though we know few European finance ministers who aren't eager to throw good money after bad. Still, it's a remarkable bit of chutzpah for the man who downplayed corruption at the U.N. to seek the ouster of the man who has fought to reduce corruption at the World Bank.

The whole attmpt to remove Wolfowitz stinks. I urge you to read this WSJ report which casts a wholly different light on the affair from that reported elsewhere and shows that he is the victim of a fight-back by the worst elements in the Bank, angry at his attempts to snuff out their cosy corruption:

[T]his flap is a political hit based on highly selective leaks to a willfully gullible press corps... The only way this fiasco could get any worse would be for Mr. Wolfowitz to resign in the teeth of so much dishonesty and cravenness. We're glad the Bush Administration isn't falling for this Euro-bureaucracy-media putsch. Mr. Wolfowitz has apologized for any mistakes he's made, though we're not sure why. He's the one who deserves an apology.