World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz said on Thursday he made "a mistake for which I am sorry" over his handling of the promotion and pay increase of a staff member, Shaha Riza, whom he is dating.
"I proposed to the board that they establish some mechanism to judge whether the agreement reached was a reasonable outcome," Wolfowitz said in a statement handed out before his news conference ahead of the upcoming meetings of finance ministers in Washington this weekend. "I will accept any remedies they propose," he added.
Wolfowitz defended his actions to send Riza on an external assignment to the State Department soon after he joined the bank, saying he was in "unchartered waters" in his new job. "My regret is that I did not more forcefully keep myself out of it," he said. The controversy erupted last week when the bank's staff association questioned the promotion and pay increase of Riza, prompting an investigation by the bank's board of member countries.
The probe is focused on whether Wolfowitz gave preferential treatment to Riza, violating staff rules. Wolfowitz joined the bank in mid-2005 after serving as deputy defence secretary at the Pentagon, where he was one of the chief architects of the Bush administration's war strategy in Iraq.
In his statement, Wolfowitz said he confessed his relationship with Riza to the board when he joined the bank and took the advice of the board's ethics committee to promote and relocate Riza.
Riza was given an external bank assignment to the US State Department in September 2005. "I made a good faith effort to implement my understanding of that advice, and it was done in order to take responsibility for settling an issue that I believed had potential to harm the institution," he said. "In hindsight I wish I had trusted my original instincts and kept myself out of the negotiations," he added.
After some pressing my reporters, Wolfowitz said he would not speculate what the board could decide - and if he would be forced to resign. "I made it clear to them I was trying to make a judgement of what was reasonable" he added.
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