“It's important to own operations within the Bank”

Development is…THE thing for roughly 80 percent of the world's population that is struggling to catch up with those of us who have the great advantages of living in developed countries.

… the prediction five years ago that by the year 2005 there would be as many orphans from AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa as there are children east of the Mississippi [has come true]…

…Africa has the highest proportion of poor people -- I mean sub-Saharan Africa… slightly more than half of the 600 million people on that vast subcontinent live on less than a dollar a day…[the World Banks wants] to help sub-Saharan Africa reverse the cycle of poverty and deteriorating living conditions. … I really believe that Africa can become a continent of hope and that we at the World Bank -- put more broadly, we who have the advantages of living in developed countries -- have an obligation to help them.

…the World Bank and the IMF, our shareholders, 184 countries in all, brought that Gleneagles Summit promise closer to fruition…. …the World Bank would be able to continue serving the long-term needs of the poor.

… important as aid is, as important as debt relief is, the opportunities that can be generated by trade are far more significant. Trade is the missing link to jobs and opportunity. Unless the people of Africa and other poor countries have access to markets where they can sell their products, they will not escape poverty or be able to give their children a better future. … The stakes are too high not just for the poor, but for the global economy, to let the trade talks conclude without real progress. The Doha Round represents an important opportunity to rewrite the rules of an unfair trading system that holds back the potential of the poorest people of the world. … Mongolia, that exports to the United States just about $240 million a year, pays more in tariffs than Norway does on $6-1/2 billion of exports to the United States. Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world, is charged the same amount of tariffs on its $2 billion of exports to the United States that France pays on $30 billion of exports. It's simply not fair. And the answer, by the way, is not to pick on Norway and France;… … if Doha fails, it's the world's poor, those 1.2 billion people who are not represented in Hong Kong, who will suffer the most. Seventy percent of the world's poor live in rural areas. They depend on agriculture to earn a living and to feed their families. Rich countries, the developed countries, spent $280 billion annually on agricultural supports. … Consumers pay roughly of that total $168 billion a year in higher prices, and taxpayers pay $112 billion a year in direct subsidies. If you compare those amounts with the amounts spent on aid, the differences are striking. The U.S. and Europe spend up to $3 billion -- excuse me, $3 in support to their farmers for every dollar they spend on aid.

… But the real damage is not just the waste of resources, it's the damage done to farmers in poor countries who are denied markets to sell their goods. …The World Bank estimates that full liberalization of trade and goods alone could generate $300 billion a year in additional production for the world economy. [Foreign businesses in] Developing countries would gain [a good portion of] $86 billion of that share….

… Many poor countries will need help in taking advantage of new opportunities. They'll need help to build infrastructure, to improve institutions, and to reform weak policies. … We are working closely with our partners in the IMF and the World Trade Organization on what we call an "aid for trade" package to help poor countries improve their investment climate, invest in infrastructure, and empower people.

… the IFC has had to double the projected amounts for these export credits in the first year from 100 million (dollars) to $200 million. And most interesting to me, the demand in Africa has been projected from 4 million (dollars), initially, to now 40 million (dollars). There's a real demand for trade opportunities in the poorest countries of the world, and we need to help them exploit that.

… development is about economics, but it's about much more then just economics. There are other sometimes, I think, almost mistakenly called soft factors….

… accountability and transparency, governments are more likely to make decisions based on the interests of their people. … but a free press also matters for accountability and therefore for development.

…empirical research by the World Bank shows that countries that defend civil liberties, protect the freedom of the press and allow civil society to operate freely do a better job of tackling corruption than those that don't.

… Corruption is a disease that drains resources and discourages investment. It is costing the developing world, just in direct costs alone, we estimate, about $80 billion a year, an equal amount to the total of all development assistance. … every corrupt transaction has at least two parties -- unfortunately, sometimes more than two. … at the World Bank we're working with countries that request our help to [police these countries and] strengthen legislation and institutions [in our own interest], so they can combat corruption. We're working to help them recover stolen funds [which are ours]. We had a landmark agreement in September signed between the government of Nigeria and the government of Switzerland to return to the Nigerian people nearly half a billion dollars, $489 million, that had been stolen by the former dictator Abacha and salted away in Swiss banks.

… It's also important to own operations within the Bank. It's part of our job to protect the resources that we've been entrusted with that need to go to help the poorest people in the world. And we know very well that Bank-financed projects are vulnerable to corruption, and we're doing something about it. … And we publicly blacklist firms that engage in bribery in our projects. Last fiscal year we investigated 350 cases. … Our policy on internal corruption and fraud is zero tolerance, and that is applied consistently to staff at all levels in the Bank. It's an area where I -- that I personally feel very strongly about,….

… The bottom line is all of this work needs to be measured, though, by the results that we are delivering for the people who depend on us the most: the poorest people of the world, those 1.2 billion people living on less than $1 a day. … We have to ask ourselves at the World Bank Group every day whether we're doing the best we can to bring hope and opportunity into the lives of the poor, whether the resources made available to us are being spent wisely, so that we can live up to our mission of helping free the world of poverty.

…, but we don't have a lot more time [for success in the Doha Round] because the fast track authority that is so crucial to getting any agreements through the U.S. Congress will expire, I think at the end of next year or effectively maybe the very beginning of 2007. We basically have 12 months, and we can't start at the end of that period.

… We need the same kind of energy and enthusiasm and political support to say we've got to do something about these indefensible agricultural barriers.

… I work for 184 countries; I don't work for the Bush administration. …American assistance, development assistance has increased substantially. It's way -- under his administration -- way short of where I'd like to see it, but it's moving up. … I'm there as a international civil servant, but I can't stop feeling a certain special responsibility as an American. And I really have been delighted to find that Africa is not just an interest of the African-American community here,….

… Evangelical Christian community. Americans understand, I think, the moral importance of trying to do something for Africa.

… But one finance minister said to me: we need to stop talking to Africa about our colonial history as an excuse. It was a terrible period, it's left us with a terrible burden, but we're not going to solve that by talking about it; we're going to solve it by taking responsibility. …, our policy is to make sure the problem is fixed before we start lending more. And if there are people involved in our projects or companies involved that misbehave, they need to be sanctioned. … I think we have to move to a gold standard;…

… I went to Bosnia principally to be at Srebrenica for the 10th anniversary of the horrible massacre there, but I was pleasantly surprised to find what an important role the bank had played in both Bosnia and in Serbia in helping to move those countries forward on the path of economic development.

… The question correctly points out that you can only get so far in development when you have significant political barriers in the way. … that this issue of blockade, to use their word, is not just a political issue; it has development effects. … poverty is as severe a problem in parts of Central Asia as it is in Africa. And when you're poor at 7,000 feet and 10 degrees below zero, it really hurts. … you need to look beyond the public health system; you need to look at investments in things like water. … And roads and water are the two big pieces the World Bank is going to focus on in that regard. … the sort of less exciting business of making sure that civil servants get paid adequately so that the health ministry functions…[to reassure the] … Gates Foundation…that when they target on a specific problem, the system is there to help them deliver.

… When I went to Africa, which was my first foreign trip, I thought I might get a lot of questions about Iraq. I didn't get a single one. I think it's because Africans care about Africa. They care about what you're going to do about Africa. And that's where we're going to be measured. … I'm as serious about the issues I'm pursuing at the bank as I was about the issues I pursued in earlier jobs, including the last one. That's what they're looking for and that's what they want.

Q: …how do you account for the intelligence failures regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

PW: Well, I don't have to, and it's not just because I don't work for the U.S. government anymore. I mean, in my old job I didn't have to. I was, like everyone else, outside the intelligence community and not just in the Bush administration, but in the Clinton administration; not just in the United States, but in the U.K. and France and elsewhere. We relied on the intelligence community for those judgements. So the question is, in a way, how do they account for it, or how did the commissions that have attempted to understand it and account for it? … part of the answer is on display today in the trial that's going on in Baghdad. … you understand how difficult it was to penetrate secrets in a country where the penalties for revealing secrets were much worse than death. You say, how can there be something worse than death? Well, just think for a two minutes. If somebody threatens your children or your wife or your parents, it's very easy to be worse than death. And these people spent a lot of time figuring out how to terrorize and intimidate people. And by the way, they didn't stop when Baghdad was liberated. … I always believed and I still believe that there were at least three major reasons…why Saddam was a danger, why that regime was a danger. Both with his weapons of mass destruction programs -- and by the way, I don't think anyone has claimed that he didn't have the capacity, once out of sanctions, to generate those weapons. … But I believe David Kay and Charles Deulfer have both made it clear…that once free from the sanctions, Saddam would have been back in business. Remember, he built these things. There's no question he had them 14 years ago, and there's not much question he could have had them again in the future. … I think his support for terrorism in various forms was the second reason. And his genocidal treatment of his own people is the third reason of the principal ones. … when General Franks was putting his plan together, one of his major preoccupations and one of the reasons the military plan emphasized speed over mass was to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction. It was the sense that the greatest danger in taking this man on would be that he would use them. If you could've given us a guarantee that they wouldn't be used, there would have been other policy options available probably. …I think it's clear that when Baghdad was liberated, Saddam didn't stop fighting, didn't stop paying people to blow up Americans and Iraqis. … [Saddam’s terror organizations] mobilized and continued an effort to bring back some version of the old dictatorship, maybe even bring back Saddam. I mean, he still stands there and says, I'm the president of Iraq. … I personally don't think more troops would have answered the problem. … A big part of our problem is the appearance that the United States was, and perhaps remains, an occupying power. … I read a Brookings Report not so long ago that said Iraqi military and police have lost 3,700 killed in action since June of 2003. Our numbers are high and going higher, approaching 2,200 American killed, but the Iraqi numbers are even higher. These people are fighting for their country,….

Q: …, former Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Jackson, lead Nuremberg

prosecutor, called wars of aggressive, quote, “the supreme international crime.” The -- a lot of people have attacked you very personally around the country and around the world. I wanted to get your sense of what it's like to be on the receiving end of all of this. How you deal with it, if you take it personally, or if you and the other neo-conservatives see this as having been worth whatever the costs are to you personally and to the nation?

PW: …, I've been to a lot of funerals. I've spent a lot of time with wounded soldiers and their families. … And every one of those statistics is a personal tragedy. It always makes you think. … It's incredibly important to win. … One severely wounded soldier said, I would prefer to have my arm back, but I believe it was the right thing. … I think the whole world, frankly, should be enormously grateful to the Americans and British, other coalition forces who've sacrificed the way they have. And I think the real judgment of this is going to be the historical one. Five or 10 years from now we'll know what happened, which is crucial to judging things.

“Trade – the Missing Link to Opportunity,” Remarks by President of the World Bank Group Paul Wolfowitz at the National Press Club, Washington, D.C., December 7, 2005.