THE STATE Department yesterday denied that Washington is sending mixed signals on the removal of sanctions against Pakistan.

“There are absolutely no mixed signals. You are completely confused on the subject matter,” spokesman Philip Reeker told the Washington Times’ “Embassy Row.”

The Times reported earlier this week on comments from Reeker and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage on whether to lift sanctions imposed on Pakistan after its 1998 nuclear tests and other sanctions slapped on the country after a military coup in 1999.

It was noted that Reeker, in a press briefing last week, said sanctions “cannot be lifted until (President Bush) determines that a democratically elected government has taken office” in Pakistan.

On Friday last week, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, on a visit to Australia, told reporters that the administration is, indeed, considering lifting “some of the sanctions,” even though the government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf remains in power.

Reeker yesterday said he and Armitage were talking about different sanctions.

Reeker said he was referring to the “democracy sanctions” imposed after the coup, which overthrew an elected, if corrupt, government, while Armitage was talking about the nuclear sanctions.

The United States slapped similar sanctions on Pakistan and India after both countries conducted nuclear weapons tests in 1998.

Washington has recently discussed removing the sanctions on India, and Pakistan has been demanding equal treatment.

Pakistan Embassy spokesman Assad Hayauddin said yesterday that Armitage’s comment was the “most direct public statement we have heard.”

Hayauddin said Pakistan is actually under four sets of sanctions.The first were imposed in 1990 when the United States suspected Pakistan of possessing the capability to develop nuclear weapons.

The 1998 and 1999 actions deepened the punitive measures against Pakistan, and the latest were imposed in November, he said.

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World Bank leader — doing his worst

THE WASHINGTON Post’s Nora Boustany reports that the September/October issue of Foreign Policy is publishing an investigative piece that is sharply critical of World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn’s style of personalized management and costly embrace of trendy ideas.

The article, with a cover title of “The Man Who Broke the Bank?” and an inside headline of “Who’s Minding the Bank?” was written by Stephen Fidler, US diplomatic editor of the Financial Times, who began the project late last year and said by telephone from London yesterday that he had interviewed and made use of more than 100 primary sources in his reporting.

Fidler writes that the bank’s potential for expanding and influencing the path of the global economy has not been realized in Wolfensohn’s tenure, a time when the bank’s potential influence “seemed to be on the verge of an unprecedented expansion.”

The report credits Wolfensohn with being the hardest working president the World Bank has had and its brightest and most passionate leader since Robert McNamara. But it also describes Wolfensohn’s ego, his temper and his inability to deal with those challenging his views.

Those traits, the magazine says, have diffused the bank’s focus and sense of mission as a tool for development and have driven out some of its best staff members.

Without a clear mandate or well-defined products, the institution finds itself in crisis and awash in criticism.

The article also assails some of the bank’s shareholder nations, including the United States, Britain, France and Germany, for behaving like absentee owners who ignore the bank except on particular occasions that serve their pet objectives.

Many in the bank say Chinese political sensitivities killed a controversial anti-poverty project in western China last year, rather than real concerns about the program, according to Fidler.

A World Faiths Development Dialogue to involve the world’s faiths in the development process has cost the bank up to $1 million at the same time that cuts have been made in essential operating expenditures, according to Devesh Kapur of Harvard University, who is co-author of an official history of the World Bank.

To his critics, Wolfensohn has promoted favorites, ignoring bank regulations on staff advancement and prompting talented senior staff to leave. They also say he has caved in to New Age economic fads and interest groups, sacrificing the bank’s intellectual integrity.

Fidler said yesterday that Wolfensohn “gets shocked when people disagree with him, he sees it as a kind of betrayal.” Wolfensohn’s defenders point out that he has weeded out fiefdoms.