Washington, March 21:

Under-fire World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz hailed unanimous support from the bank’s board for his campaign against corruption, and played down tensions over the policy.

Speaking to reporters, he said a watered-down strategy paper to fight graft in the bank’s lending to poorer countries had been given full backing by national directors on the board.

“We’ve had several engagements of the board on this paper. We had clear unanimity, there’s no question about it,” said Wolfowitz, who has been attacked for focusing more on corruption than on global development.

“This issue of governance is a critical issue for development,” the former deputy Pentagon chief stressed, highlighting the bank’s anti-graft work in Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Leaked minutes from a January board meeting showed the national representatives in open revolt against Wolfowitz, who was controversially nominated two years ago by the US government to succeed James Wolfensohn.

But Eckhard Deutscher, Germany’s representative on the World Bank board, underscored “good relations” between management and directors over the latest version of the corruption strategy. “Now, a lot of work still lies before the implementation. I must say I’m happy that we came to such a broad, common conclusion,” the German official said.

Wolfowitz already had to alter his contentious drive after a chorus of criticism from both rich and poor nations at the bank’s annual meeting, in Singapore, in September.

Details of the new campaign are yet to be fleshed out, but the strategy emphasizes the need to engage more with civil society, the private sector and the media in the World Bank’s client countries.

However, Wolfowitz has been forced to backtrack from initial plans to bypass national

governments more, in a bid to ensure that aid gets to the deserving. “We have to get involved.

But in getting involved, we bring money, but we also need to work with governments to improve governance,” he said.

A country like Liberia, now run by Africa’s first elected female president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, had the “goodwill” to fight corruption but limited means “to stop money disappearing into somebody’s bank account” without outside help.

Countries like Britain, France and Germany were all wary about attaching restrictive conditions to the World Bank’s multibillion-dollar development assistance.

But Wolfowitz insisted that some of the most vocal critics of the strategy, such as Britain, did not disagree with its general aim to quell corruption. “We’ve had frankly consistent support from the UK on the matter of governance,” he said.

In a February report, the World Bank said it had investigated more than 400 cases of corruption in its lending projects in recent years and punished more than 100 people and companies for financial wrongdoing.

In earlier decades, some kleptocratic leaders in developing world personally enriched themselves with the help of largesse from organizations like the World Bank.

But civil society groups have led criticism that Wolfowitz risks endangering the very impoverished people who are meant to benefit from reforms. He insisted it was possible to marry clean lending with anti-poverty work.

“We can’t sit around and wait three or five years for the governance situation to be perfect. We have to produce some results and do it in a way that keeps track of where the money’s going,” he said.