I will not resign, says Wolfowitz

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz has said he would not resign in the face of "bogus" charges against him.

In a statement to a panel of World Bank directors, the embattled

Mr Wolfowitz was defending himself against accusations that he pushed through a huge pay package for his girlfriend without the Bank's consent.

The committee is due to report to the Bank's board of 24 representatives, who will decide on the president's fate.

Mr Wolfowitz has apologised for his actions, vowing to stay on to complete what he called "important work".

Earlier, US President George W Bush said he believed Mr Wolfowitz "ought to stay" in his job.

But a growing army of voices, including World Bank colleagues and the European Parliament, are calling for Mr Wolfowitz' resignation amid escalating concern the scandal embroiling the former Pentagon number two is damaging the credibility of the global lender.

International development group Oxfam called his continued presidency "untenable" in an open letter to the Guardian newspaper on Monday.

'Good faith'

Mr Wolfowitz said the World Bank's ethics committee had access to his decision to relocate his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, to the US State Department in 2005 "if they wanted it".

Mr Wolfowitz has previously said that Ms Riza's salary increase to almost $200,000 (£100,000) "was well within the parameters" of the World Bank's salary and benefits structure.

"I acted transparently, sought and received guidance from the bank's ethics committee and conducted myself in good faith in accordance with that guidance," Mr Wolfowitz told the panel.

"I will not resign in the face of a plainly bogus charge of conflict of interest," he added.

"The goal of this smear campaign, I believe, is to create a self-fulfilling prophecy that I am an ineffective leader and must step down for that reason alone."

Mr Wolfowitz appeared at Monday's meeting with Washington lawyer Robert Bennett, who is famous for helping former president Bill Clinton settle sexual harassment charges in 1998.

"We want to make a presentation to them to show that this conflict-of-interest allegation is absolutely false," Mr Bennett said ahead of meeting.

Mr Wolfowitz was a controversial nominee to the post of head of the World Bank because of his support for the war in Iraq.

BBC News

John Muir, Naturalist / Writer

• Born: 21 April 1838
• Birthplace: Dunbar, Scotland
• Died: 1914
• Best Known As: Naturalist and founder of the Sierra Club

John Muir was an early American conservationist who has been called "The Father of the National Parks System." Muir came to the United States in 1849 and studied at the University of Wisconsin (1859-1863). He walked from Indiana to the Gulf of Mexico in 1867 and 1868, ended up in California and began his love affair with the Yosemite Valley. An eager traveller and indefatigable walker, he also toured Nevada, Utah and Alaska. He settled in California where he wrote, managed a fruit ranch, and campaigned for the establishment of Yosemite National Park, which Congress approved in 1890. His descriptions of the rugged glories of the American west influenced the thinking of President Theodore Roosevelt, among many others. Muir was a co-founder of the Sierra Club and served as its first president from 1892 until his death in 1914. His books include The Mountains of California (1894) and Our National Parks (1901).

Muir (along with an image of Yosemite) is featured on the California state quarter released by the U.S. Mint in 2005... As a young man Muir was a talented wood carver and inventor who built his own clocks.

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Charlotte Brontë, Writer

• Born: 21 April 1816
• Birthplace: Thornton, Yorkshire, England
• Died: 31 March 1855 (complications from pregnancy)
• Best Known As: Author of Jane Eyre

Charlotte is the author of Jane Eyre and a member of the remarkable Brontë family. The sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne first published their poetry under pseudonyms: Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell was released in 1846, selling only a few copies. Charlotte's novel Jane Eyre was published in 1847, shortly after Emily's Wuthering Heights; the sisters had almost simultaneously written what later became known as two of the great novels of English literature. Jane Eyre was an immediate success and Charlotte went on to publish Shirley (1848) and Villette (1853). She outlived her sisters but still was only 38 when she died in pregnancy.

Charlotte was the only one of the sisters to marry... Her novel The Professor was written before Jane Eyre but not published until 1857... As children the three sisters and their brother Branwell dreamed up and wrote intricate histories of the fantasy kingdoms of Angria and Gondal; Legends of Angria, a collection of Charlotte's childhood writings, was published in 1933.

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