KEY POINTS:
The ousting of Paul Wolfowitz as president had threatened to unleash a long period of internecine strife at the World Bank.
The United States insisted on maintaining its historic right to pick the president but the bank's other 184 members were restive about the American agenda to tie aid to an anti-corruption agenda. And then the US found Robert Zoellick.
Zoellick is a former US trade representative and ally of George W. Bush, most recently deputy to the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and now a sort of global ambassador for Goldman Sachs.
The 53-year-old Harvard Law School graduate's negotiating skills have won him international respect. Pascal Lamy, the former EU trade commissioner, praised his "ability as a strategist, as one who can broker compromise and as one who has profound interests in the concerns of developing countries".
Member countries have endorsed his appointment to the World Bank, which will be ratified by the time Wolfowitz departs on June 30.
Zoellick was born in Illinois and worked as a lawyer in Washington before sidestepping into politics and, when the Republicans have been out of power, into the private sector. He has served on several boards, including briefly at Enron.
No profile of Zoellick fails to mention how he is a difficult man to work for. Intellectually arrogant, he is prone to harsh words for those he disagrees with. But people who have worked with him at Goldman Sachs over the past year paint him as gracious and a good listener.
Most importantly he is a pragmatist. He is allied with the neo-cons of the Republican party but has different priorities from many neo-cons. He is most closely associated with the ideology of free trade.
But he also attracted criticism. Paul Zeitz, director of the Global Aids Alliance, said that Zoellick "has been a close friend to the brand-name pharmaceutical industry" and that "bilateral trade agreements he has negotiated effectively block access to generic medication for millions of people".
- THE INDEPENDENT
