Who after Wolfowitz?

Wolfowitz's successor will have to persuade the countries to contribute about US$ 30 billion over the next few years to fund a programme that provides interest-free loans to the poorest countries. We hope the World Bank will choose as their captain somebody who is a person of vision and who has demonstrated ability to liaise with development partners and, most importantly, someone who has empathy with the poor.

The world does not lack competent, highly trained and experienced leaders, though most of them just happen not to be Americans. Despite widespread demands for change, the global lending institution's new president may once again be an American according to an unwritten custom chosen by the US government, the largest shareholder in the Bank.

President Bush may enter history and offset the grayer chapters of his presidency to a great extent if he chooses someone from a developing country like Bangladesh for the top post of World Bank: a person like Professor Yunus who, one of the very few in the world, knows the pangs of those writhing with pains of abject poverty.

We salute Wolfowitz for leaving his office in grace, not allowing the media world concocting luscious stories on his cordial relation with an elderly Muslim lady Ms Shaha Riza who organised three years ago a conference of Middle East and North African democracy advocates that declared dictatorship "a crime against humanity". Even if Wolfowitz, 63, had any infatuation towards Riza, 53, it should not be shouted as a Sophia Loren-Carlo Ponti equation!