WASHINGTON, 15 April 2007 — There are not many tears being shed in Washington over the jam Paul Wolfowitz, current president of the World Bank, and a principle architect of the Iraq war, has got himself into over regarding the news that he personally dictated the terms under which the bank gave what it called his “domestic partner” substantial pay raises and promotions in exchange for temporarily leaving her job at the World Bank.

And, as the International Monetary Fun and World Bank Spring meetings are being held in Washington, it is clear the Wolfowitz scandal has taken on a much broader political dimension.

“At its core, the fight about whether Mr. Wolfowitz should stay on at the bank is a debate about Mr. Bush and his tumultuous relationship with the rest of the world,” noted The New York Times yesterday.

The former US deputy defense secretary remains in the firing line as finance ministers from the wealthy Group of Seven (G7) nations began their weekend of meetings in Washington, now overshadowed by the controversy.

Wolfowitz, 63, is under pressure to end his two-year tenure after bank directors dismantled key planks of his defense over substantial and unjustified pay rises given by the development lender to his Libyan-born girlfriend, Shaha Riza.

“We’ll have to see if Wolfowitz will be able to retain the moral authority necessary to fulfill his duties,” Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega said in Washington.

One day after Wolfowitz was booed in a meeting with World Bank staff who were demanding his resignation, US President George Bush stood behind his colleague.

“The president fully supports Paul Wolfowitz and wants him to continue his service as World Bank president,” a White House spokesman said. Critics said there were no signs, however, that Bush was about to rush to Wolfowitz’s side and offer his help.

The Wolfowitz scandal is also proving an opportunity for old scores to be settled. Both the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency have been at odds with the Bush administration at various times since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Europeans are still angry over Bush’s decision to name John Bolton, one of the biggest and most vocal critics of the United Nations, as US ambassador there. That proposal ended when the Democratic-controlled Senate made clear they would not confirm him to finish Bush’s second term.

Others remember that the Bush administration tried to discredit and fire Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the Egyptian-born head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, when he now famously announced in early 2003 that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program.

The relationship between Wolfowitz and his Arab feminist girlfriend’s residency at the World Bank has always been scrutinized by those trying to understand one of the most controversial men in Washington.

When it was first disclosed in 2004 that Wolfowitz and Shaha Ali Riza, an Oxford-educated Middle East expert who speaks Arabic, French, Italian, Turkish and English were dating, the news came as a shock to those who had tried to place one of the central architects of the Iraq war firmly in America’s pro-Israel lobby.

After all, Wolfowitz’s father, Jacob, according to The New Yorker magazine, was “an eminent mathematician who taught at Columbia and Cornell [universities], and was a fervent Zionist, and Wolfowitz’s elder sister, Laura, lives in Israel.

“Wolfowitz’s critics sometimes portray him as an unquestioning defender of the Israeli government, and yet he has publicly expressed sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians, and some Arab reformers regard him as a friend,” noted The New Yorker.

Since separating from his wife of more than 30 years, Wolfowitz has dated Riza, a secular Muslim woman in her fifties — a British national from a Libyan family who grew up in Saudi Arabia, and is a longtime advocate of democracy in Arab countries.

When Wolfowitz and Riza, both now divorced, became close, she was working in the Middle East and North Africa department of the World Bank where she was described as an expert on women’s issues and a media contact for the bank’s reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

Riza has not kept silent about the ordeal. Last week she wrote a memo to the bank committee investigation her transfer to State Department and her usually large pay increase, saying she did not see any conflict of interest which had increased by more than $60,000 to $193,590 — tax free.

She also complained that she — and not American taxpayers — was being victimized. She described the “personal pain and stress that my son and I have been subjected to” for having agreed to the job, “and the damage that this whole episode has caused me professionally, physically and psychologically.”