James Wolfensohn, special envoy of the international diplomatic "Quartet," complained Wednesday of being "disenfranchised" in his efforts to advance the Mideast peace process, and threatened to quit the high-profile post. "I think the Quartet itself must continue ... but the role of a disenfranchised leader of that Quartet doesn't seem to me to be a particularly attractive thing to spend your life doing," the former World Bank head said Wednesday at a hearing of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He suggested that he still hopes to make a constructive contribution to helping achieve Middle East peace, but not necessarily in his current post. "I am considering, but have not decided... whether the best place for me to do it is leaving the Quartet, or in other ways," Wolfensohn said at the Senate hearing examining challenges in the Middle East following January's Palestinian Authority elections. "If you were in a job where it's unclear what the purpose of that job was, and what the backing that you have was... and you're as old as I am, you would probably wonder whether for the few remaining years that you've got, [if] that's the thing you want to do," the 72-year old Wolfensohn told the panel.
Wolfensohn, who retired as president of the World Bank last year, was appointed in April 2005 by the Middle East Quartet to be its special envoy for Israel's disengagement project in the occupied Palestinian territory of Gaza. But his job has been complicated by Washington's insistence on withholding aid from a Palestinian government expected to be formed by Hamas, which the Americans brand a terrorist organisation.
Deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli tried Wednesday to play down any differences between the quartet and Wolfensohn and said Washington hoped the envoy would stay on the job at least through April. "We certainly retain full confidence in special envoy Wolfensohn. We think he's doing a great job," Ereli told reporters.