(Adds quotes, paragraphs 5-6) By Lesley Wroughton WASHINGTON, Oct 13 (Reuters) - World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz will discuss development priorities in Europe next week with big donor countries in an atmosphere tense over his management practices and anti-corruption tactics. For Wolfowitz, the visit to Oslo, Geneva and Paris is "to compare notes with development partners on their priorities." But bank officials said he also would seek to mend divides, especially with France, which is among the big European nations that have opposed his methods of tackling corruption. The trip comes as the World Bank gears up to ask donor countries to replenish the coffers for the next three years of the International Development Association, the bank's main lending facility for the world's poorest countries. "Mr. Wolfowitz has accepted a number of invitations for meetings and speaking engagements in Europe," World Bank spokeswoman Amy Stilwell said. "The trip will provide an opportunity to hear from a wide range of stakeholders and interested parties on development issues, including reducing poverty in Africa and the rest of the developing world," she said. Next week, Wolfowitz will address an oil and mining conference on transparency and meet with Norwegian officials in Oslo; he will meet Inter-Parliamentary Union members, a global body of 141 parliaments, in Geneva; and spotlight Africa and meet with French finance and development ministers in Paris. Since Wolfowitz took the helm of the world's largest development agency, he argued that corruption is one of the biggest threats to reducing poverty, suspending projects loans to Kenya, India, Bangladesh, Cameroon and others. World Bank member governments last month backed a strategy for how the bank should tackle corruption in developing countries after lengthy haggling behind the scenes, but they insisted that they oversee how the strategy is implemented. The deal followed months of tensions between Wolfowitz and mainly big European countries worried that his zeal could slow the flow of lending and punish the poor. CORRUPTION CONDITIONS The issue erupted before World Bank meetings in Singapore last month, when Britain threatened to withhold funding earmarked for World Bank reforms to press the body to change the condition it attaches to its loans. The meeting with French Finance Minister Thierry Breton and Development Minister Brigitte Girardin will be the first since tensions over corruption escalated. In Paris, a French official said corruption will be part of the talks, which also will focus on Africa and the Middle East. "It must be done in a transparent way, it shouldn't be one person sitting in their corner who is deciding on whether a country is corrupt or not," the official said. But some believe the anti-corruption drive is a lightening rod for broader dissatisfaction by some members with Wolfowitz, a former top Pentagon official who still faces questions about his role in planning the Iraq war, which many European countries opposed. Development analysts, who closely watch the bank, believe the tension between Wolfowitz and some members is about who makes the judgment calls, and ultimately, who runs the bank. "The board thinks Wolfowitz has been unwilling in a sense to share policy decisions with them and is trying to push him into this rules-based decision-making process, which is wholly impractical," one Washington-based analyst said. "It is probably a good thing he is going to Europe." (Additional Reporting by Anna Willard in Paris)
