'Wolf' puts on fluffy sheep's clothing
Friday February 03 2006
A year ago , Paul Wolfowitz was viewed by his critics - and some of his supporters - as the toughest of Washington's neo-conservatives. As America's deputy secretary of defence, he was the architect of the justification for the Iraq war.
Now the "Wolf" wants to show he cares. He says the bank's mission is "helping poor people", the emphasis being on people, not governments.
At present, the most urgent money is going to help poor countries suffering from bird flu "to get rid of their sick chickens". But the most important area is Africa.
"It is very short-sighted to say that Africa doesn't matter," he says. "There are issues such as health, migration and terrorism. Above all, it undercuts the moral legitimacy of the international free economy which is mostly of great benefit to humanity.
"There is amazing good news: 400m people in Asia have escaped extreme poverty in the past 20 years. Then there is the bad news: 150m to 300m in sub-Saharan Africa have slipped into extreme poverty in the same period."
Has the hard man gone soft? The soft-spoken Mr Wolfowitz denies it. His aims in his career have been the same throughout, he says: a liberal-minded belief that if people can have democracy their lives will improve.
He is looking for a fuller word than democracy, one that includes the richness of human institutions - "free societies" is what we are talking about.
The World Bank is embroiled in a row that illustrates Africa's problems. Sir Edward Clay, the former British high commissioner to Kenya, has written to Mr Wolfowitz complaining that the bank has shown "blind and offensive blundering" in giving money to Kenya at a time of appalling government corruption.
Mr Wolfowitz, surprisingly, does not object to Sir Edward's tone or criticisms: "He does not know me and he does not know our position."
He feels that the bank has not yet conveyed the true picture, which is that it is holding back five other programmes for Kenya amounting to $215m because of corruption worries. Mr Wolfowitz rejects the view that Africa is for ever stuck in poverty because, it has no history of commerce He is surprisingly unfazed by the election victory for Hamas in Palestine. He sees it as a vote against the corruption of Fatah more than for extremist ideology.
For Paul Wolfowitz, it is a continuous thread between encouraging democracy in Indonesia, where he was the American ambassador, working to help overthrow "genocidal dictators" in Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq and trying to help the African poor. It is the West's duty.
