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Week ending June 2, 2007

BBC WS Scores Exclusive Paul Wolfowitz Interview – “proud of his time at World Bank” - May 28, 20007

from Peter Connors/BBC WS

The outgoing President of the World Bank Paul Wolfowitz has strongly defended his time in office and claimed that his resignation came about due to emotions becoming overheated.

Mr Wolfowitz who resigned earlier this month after just two years in the post, was speaking in an exclusive interview with the BBC World Service.

Commenting on the scandal regarding his the promotion and salary of his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, Mr Wolfowitz told the Newshour programme, "I'm pleased that finally the board did accept that I acted in good faith and acted ethically and I accept the fact that by the time we got around to that, emotions here were so overheated that I don't think I could have accomplished what I wanted to accomplish for the people I really care about."

When asked about his relationship with the Bank and the calls from current and former bank staff for him to go, he said, "I think it tells us more about the media than about the bank and I'll leave it at that. People were reacting to a whole string of inaccurate statements and by the time we got to anything approximating accuracy the passions were a round the bend."

He spoke of any damage to the Bank's reputation, "Hopefully people will look at some of the governance issues here and the human resources issues here and it could be a stronger place, it should be a stronger place. This kind of experience, actually exposes problems but you don't solve problems unless you expose them."

Mr Wolfowitz also discussed the appointment on his successor and whether that person should be American, "I do think something needs to be done about the under representation of African countries…I think if we're going to take African voices seriously, then there need to be more of them, there also needs to be a much more concerted effort to increase the African voices in the bank's staff."

He highlighted concerns about the support for his anti-corruption policies, "People were much more comfortable talking about it than actually confronting the consequences of problems."

"Frankly the most inspired people and the ones most easily convinced, happen to be the ones that are out there working in country offices. There's something that's a little enervating, to be charitable about it, about being in these wonderful comfortable conditions in Washington," he said in a wider comment about his strategies at the Bank.

When asked if he had any regrets he said, "Oh probably a couple, but right now I feel pretty good."

When writing his resignation statement, he said, "Somebody said this is a very long statement and I said, 'Well it's true but there's actually a lot we've accomplished.' And I feel very proud of that, very satisfied about that and ready to go on and do other things."

Paul Wolfowitz was speaking to Claire Bolderson on BBC World Service for Newshour.

BBC World Service will broadcast the full interview at 1300 BST (1200 GMT) Monday 28 May on Newshour.