Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Advancing with Chutzpah

As I feared, the greatest threat to my making a Chutzpah of the Week award so early is coming from the ongoing Paul Wolfowitz affair. Here is the lead from the latest Financial Times story reported by Krishna Guha, Eoin Callan and Edward Luce in Washington:

Paul Wolfowitz was on Wednesday understood to have begun discussing terms for his resignation as president of the World Bank.

The details of the negotiations were unclear but officials were counselling that his departure should not be taken for granted if he could not secure terms satisfactory to him.

In other words now that Wolfowitz is finally admitting that his back is to the wall, he is still trying to dictate the terms for his departure! This appears to be the sort of thing he wants:

News agencies quoted sources familiar with the deliberations as saying Mr Wolfowitz was seeking an acknowledgment of his service and that both he and the Bank shared responsibility for the controversy over the secondment package awarded to his girlfriend, Shaha Riza.

Now, since Wolfowitz already has received the award, I am inclined to let the sex offenders keep their place in the sun (or shadows, if you prefer); but if he actually manages to get the World Bank to cave in to his "nonnegotiable demands," I may have to reconsider!

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