Embattled World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz said Monday he was the victim of a trumped up "smear campaign" aimed at forcing him to resign his position.
And signalling his intention to fight allegations that he improperly pushed a generous pay package for his girlfriend, the World Bank chief said he would not quit amid such "bogus charges."
"The goal of this smear campaign, I believe, is to create a self-fulfilling prophecy that I am an ineffective leader and must step down for that reason alone," Wolfowitz said in a statement to a World Bank investigatory committee.
"I, for one, will not give into such tactics," the former Pentagon deputy defense secretary vowed, as the panel met to weigh Wolfowitz's actions.
"And, I will not resign in the face of a plainly bogus charge of conflict of interest," he stressed.
The World Bank chief made the statement as the panel met to hear his side of the argument over the pay package given to his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, and related ethics questions.
The committee, drawn from the full board of 24 representatives, is examining not just Riza's pay deal, but also Wolfowitz's hiring of former White House aides to influential, and highly paid, jobs in his inner circle.
A report in The Washington Post Saturday said the bank panel had already concluded that Wolfowitz breached ethics in engineering the pay raise for Riza, but remained locked in debate over whether to call explicitly for his resignation.
Wolfowitz was flanked at the meeting by Robert Bennett, a prominent Washington lawyer who helped former president Bill Clinton settle a sexual harassment case in 1998.
