Zoellick, 53, is currently a vice chairman at Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs and, if confirmed by the World Bank board of executive directors, he will succeed Paul Wolfowitz who was forced to resign in a favoritism scandal.

By an unwritten agreement, the United States selects the World Bank chief while European countries pick the head of its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund.

Zoellick, in a news briefing Wednesday, focused on the "traumatic period" at the 185-country poverty-fighting bank, without naming Wolfowitz.

"One of the biggest challenges, if not the biggest challenge, is the leadership and management issues that the bank faces today," Zoellick said.

He served four years as the US Trade Representative (2001-2005), playing a major role in negotiating the entry of China and Taiwan into the World Trade Organization and the launch of the WTO's Doha Round of international trade negotiations.

He also helped forge free-trade agreements with Singapore, Chile, Australia, and Morocco.

Born in Naperville, Illinois, Zoellick graduated with honors from Harvard Law School.

Zoellick began his Washington career in 1985 at the Treasury Department.

A personal representative for H.W. Bush at Group of Seven summits and other key international meetings, Zoellick negotiated the North American Free Trade Area in the early 1990s.He was named White House deputy chief of staff in 1992.

In 1998 he signed, along with other leading neo-conservatives such as Donald Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, a letter to Clinton calling on him to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

ZOELLICK CHOICE IS 'GROTESQUE': ACTIVIST GROUP
Another report from Paris adds: An international committee seeking an end to debt owed by poor countries on Thursday denounced the US nomination of Robert Zoellick to head the World Bank as "grotesque" and called for the institution's abolition.

In Oslo visiting Chilean President Michelle Bachelet criticized the practice under which the United States in effect selects the World Bank chief from among a list of candidates limited to US citizens.

"We think that multilateral organisations should be rotated from different nations and we should always have the best people," she told a press conference after talks with Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.