Wolfowitz says victim of smear campaign

By Lesley Wroughton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz lashed back at critics on Monday who he said were conducting a smear campaign against him and vowed he would not resign.

In a statement to a bank panel looking into whether he broke ethical and other rules in a pay-and-promotion deal he directed for his girlfriend, Wolfowitz said treatment of the issue had become "circus like."

"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, even if the ethics charges are unwarranted," Wolfowitz said.

"And, I will not resign in the face of a plainly bogus charge of conflict of interest," he said in the statement.

The former deputy U.S. defence secretary, whose legacy as an architect of the Iraq war has dogged his tenure at the bank, did not rule out the possibility he may eventually step down, but made clear he would not be forced.

"Only when the cloud of these unfair and untrue charges is removed, will it truly be possible to determine objectively whether I can be an effective leader of the World Bank," Wolfowitz said.

Sources said the meeting with the seven-member panel, led by Dutch director Herman Wijffels, lasted about two hours, and focused on conflict of interest issues over the promotion for Shaha Riza, an Oxford-educated Middle East specialist.

Riza also met the panel on Monday, where she described her personal anguish over the controversy that she said had now harmed the bank.