Wolfowitz transferee says new job was forced

Shaha Riza, the woman romantically involved with World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, said she has been "victimized" for accepting a deal to transfer out of the bank.

"I would like to reiterate that I did not wish to leave the bank and did not, and do not, expect any special considerations," Riza, 52, wrote in a letter to board members that was among 101 pages of documents released yesterday.

World Bank directors found that Wolfowitz personally dictated the details of Riza's temporary assignment to the State Department along with an unusually large raise that has angered employees and sparked calls for his resignation. The directors said yesterday that they would make a speedy decision on his future.

In her one-page letter, Riza complained of the "personal pain and stress that my son and I have been subjected to and the damage that this whole episode has caused me professionally, physically and psychologically."

Riza, an eight-year bank employee who worked as a communications officer before her transfer, couldn't be reached for comment.

"I have now been victimized for agreeing to an arrangement that I have objected to and that I did not believe from the outset was in my best interests," she wrote. She said the people who had leaked details of the arrangement should be held responsible for violating bank confidentiality rules.

Wolfowitz, 63, sent a memo to the bank's personnel manager "directing him to reach an agreement with the staff member and specifying in detail the terms and conditions," the directors' statement said.

Wolfowitz, the former deputy U.S. defense secretary and an architect of the war in Iraq, was named to the World Bank post by President Bush in 2005.

The probe of Riza's promotion is overshadowing the semiannual meetings of the World Bank and its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund. Wolfowitz's news conference opening the meeting was dominated by the issue yesterday.

"Eventually, the board is going to have to ask him to resign," said Kenneth Rogoff, former chief economist at the IMF and a professor of economics at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. "His credibility has been deeply undermined."