WASHINGTON, Feb 10 1994 (IPS) - Leaders of nine U.S. and international environmental groups have charged the World Bank with excessive secrecy in the selection of a new audit panel that will investigate alleged violations of the Bank's own policies.

In a letter sent to Bank President Lewis Preston Tuesday, the leaders of the non-governmental organisations (NGOS) warned that the secrecy of the process ''is threatening the independence and credibility of the Panel from the outset''.

The NGOs, which include the Environmental Defence Fund, the Sierra Club, and the International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development, called on Preston to release the names of the panel finalists at least two weeks before the Bank's Executive Board is due to decide on them.

''In this way, the public will have a meaningful opportunity to review and comment on the proposed nominees,'' wrote the NGOs, which also included the International Rivers Network, the National Wildlife Federation, and Friends of the Earth.

A Bank spokesman, Al Drattell, said he had not seen that the letter, but the Dutch Executive Director, Eveline Herfkens, insisted that a certain amount of confidentiality was necessary to the process. ''We won't be able to get good candidates if they know they're going to be discussed in the papers,'' she told IPS.

The panel was created last September in response to a campaign by a large number of influential NGOs, backed by some western governments, which were angered by the Bank's funding of projects believed to have harmed the surrounding ecology and population in a number of developing countries.

The world's largest source of development finance, the Bank will lend some 26 billion dollars to poor nations this year. As announced by the Bank, the new, three-person panel is supposed to investigate complaints by any group of people adversely affected by a Bank project.

Before the panel can take up the case, however, the party must also show that their complaint derives from a serious violation of the Bank's own policies and procedures and that it had brought the problem to the attention of the Bank's management and received an inadequate response.

These and other procedural steps which will govern the panel's operations have drawn criticism from the NGOS which had hoped the new panel would be given more resources and much greater powers and independence.

The Bank has received more than 100 nominations for the three positions, according to Bank sources and the NGOs. The letter claimed that this has been whittled down to a shortlist of nine, but Herfkens said she expects about 10 nominees to be discussed by the Board in the latter part of February.

Among the final candidates are two U.S. nationals -- Jerome Levinson former Counsel for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Richard Bissell, former Indonesian Environment Minister Emil Salim, and Alvaro Umana, a former Costa Rican Environment Minister presently teaching at Stanford University in California, one source told IPS.

Candidates from Germany, Algeria and Switzerland are also on the current list, the source said.The letter charged that the list has yet to be formally conveyed to the board. ''It is essential that this list of names now be released to the full Board of Executive Directors,'' the NGOs wrote Preston.

''Because the panel members will in effect be reviewing the performance of Bank management in regards to alleged violations of World Bank policy and procedures, we find it particularly troubling that the names of nominees are being so secretly held by Bank management.''

But Herfkens, who also represents Israel, Cyprus and several East European and former Soviet countries on the board, denied that the Board has been kept in the dark. ''That's not true,'' she said. ''I don't know where they get that from. The Board has been involved, is involved and will be involved,'' she said.

She said that the list will likely be discussed by her and the other 23 directors on the board as early as late next week. Then Preston is expected to make the final cut and submit his recommendation for the Board's approval.(ENDS/IPS/JL/94)

Origin: Washington/FINANCE/

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