Washington, DC Reporters & Photographers: Activists will be staging a theatrical event in Murrow Park (across from World Bank headquarters) at 9:30 am on Wednesday, June 1 - Pennsylvania Ave. & 18th St., N.W.

As Washington, DC activists prepare a vivid theatrical welcome for Paul Wolfowitz and his colleagues outside the World Bank on his first day in office, 303 civil society groups from 62 countries have sent him a letter protesting the World Bank’s destructive policies as well as the lack of democracy and accountability that allowed him to become its president.

Wolfowitz, best-known for his role in planning and promoting the 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation, has proven the most controversial choice for the top post in the World Bank’s 61-year history.

Critics are especially concerned that Wolfowitz will be taking over an institution that already has a track record of protecting and advancing the interests of wealthy countries. “Wolfowitz has demonstrated that he will use whatever means necessary to spread the influence and power of the U.S.,” said Sameer Dossani, Director of the 50 Years Is Enough Network, a coalition of World Bank and IMF critics. “The World Bank presidency offers him new, and very powerful, means to shape the global economic and political order. He does not look like the person who will shift the Bank’s priorities away from opening up markets for multinational corporations and toward assisting governments and citizens that want to determine their own fate.”

Anti-war groups have joined with organizations focused on economic issues to issue a warning as Wolfowitz takes office. Leslie Cagan, National Coordinator of United for Peace and Justice, the largest anti-war coalition in the U.S., said, “The ironclad connection between military aggression and economic domination has never been clearer than with the appointment of Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank. He is changing offices, but continuing to do the work of coercing the rest of the world to accept the dictates of the U.S. government. It isn’t simply that an ideologue like Wolfowitz has been given the reins of the U.S. military; the Bush Administration is now deploying its ‘best and brightest’ more broadly to expand U.S. domination. No good can come of this approach to international relations.”

The civil society letter addressed to Wolfowitz has garnered over 300 organizational endorsements from 60 countries in less than a week. Many of those came from anti-war groups in the U.S. and elsewhere. The endorsers are at pains to make clear that they do not seek to make Wolfowitz some sort of partner with civil society. It does, however, outline challenges and lay down three benchmarks to assess Wolfowitz’s performance in his first months:

- Will Wolfowitz recuse himself from the World Bank/UN investigation into the U.S. government's distribution of Iraqi development funds to Halliburton -- a contract he was personally involved with?

- Will he demonstrate genuine good will toward the Iraqi people by disowning the World Bank’s suggestion that food subsidies be eliminated – in a county where children’s acute malnutrition rates have nearly doubled since the U.S. invasion?

- And finally, will he extend the logic he used in calling for the cancellation of debts incurred by Saddam Hussein -- on the grounds that the Iraqi people had no voice in contracting the loans and did not benefit from them – beyond Iraq? Debt campaigners have long made the same argument to the World Bank, the IMF, and G7 governments about the debts contracted by Mobutu in Zaïre (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), by the apartheid regime in South Africa for the purpose of oppressing the majority of its people, and by unrepresentative, oppressive, and corrupt governments in many other countries. Will Wolfowitz demonstrate consistency in applying his principles on behalf of the world’s most vulnerable peoples?

As the letter concludes, “the world is watching” as Paul Wolfowitz takes the helm of the World Bank. Will he orchestrate the major changes needed, or will he merely intensify the harmful policies and practices that have characterized the Bank’s track record?

Read the letter and list of endorsers, noted by country, then by organization. Translations of the letter in German, French, and Spanish are also available at www.50years.org