BERLIN (MNI) – A senior German lawmaker on Thursday urged the
government to lobby for a German as the next managing director of the
International Monetary Fund.
“I demand from the federal government that it champion for a German
getting to the top of the IMF,” Klaus-Peter Flosbach, the parliamentary
financial speaker of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right CDU/CSU
bloc, told the German business daily Handelsblatt in an interview
published on its website.
The IMF announced Wednesday that managing director Dominique
Strauss-Kahn hat told the Executive Board of his intention to resign.
The French national was arrested Saturday in New York on charges that he
attempted to rape a chambermaid at his Manhattan hotel.
Earlier this week, Berlin had already demanded that the next IMF
head be a European.
“In the current situation where the IMF is so engaged in the crisis
of some Eurozone states,” there is a strong argument for finding a good
European candidate, government spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Monday.
“We will also talk with all our partners in the IMF about this,” he
added.
At a separate press conference on Monday Merkel had stressed that
there are “good reasons” the next IMF head should be a European, also
pointing to the ongoing Eurozone debt crisis.
–Berlin bureau: +49-30-22 62 05 80; email: twidder@marketnews.com
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