Wipo chief faces calls to resign over age error
By Frances Williams
September 26, 2007
The Financial Times
Original Source:  http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/279a5436-6bc9-11dc-863b-0000779fd2ac.html

Industrialised countries led by the US, the European Union and Switzerland have called for the resignation of Kamil Idris, head of the World Intellectual Property Organisation, in the wake of scandals that, the EU says, have compromised his leadership.
Mr Idris, a Sudanese national who has the backing of African nations, has vigorously rejected the resignation demand, alleging a deliberate campaign of harassment and destabilisation over the past three years.
The stand-off paralysed the first day of Wipo's an-nual meeting on Monday, after the African group re-jected a US attempt to put on the agenda an internal auditor's report into a move by Mr Idris last year to correct his year of birth in Wipo records from 1945 to 1954.
A compromise brokered yesterday allowed the meeting to go ahead with its substantive business while a selected group of countries discussed behind the scenes how to handle the report.
The widely leaked report says Mr Idris, who joined Wipo in 1983 and became director-general in 1997, broke UN financial and integrity rules by allowing the alleged error to go uncorrected for 23 years. Originally claiming to be nine years older than he was may have helped Mr Idris obtain his first Wipo job and advance his Wipo career, the report noted.
Mr Idris, who has already said he will not stand again for director-general when his second term ends in 2009, denies any wrongdoing.
Western diplomats said the US, the EU, Switzerland and Japan separately saw Mr Idris last week to urge him to resign. The EU's formal demarche, which the FT has seen, calls on Mr Idris to step down in the best interests of the organisation.
The EU urges you . . . to draw the only possible and dignified conclusion in the current regrettable situation. It is time for an early change of leadership, it says.
However, the diplomats admitted privately they did not expect Mr Idris to go voluntarily and doubted whether, in the face of African opposition, they could muster enough support to oust him.
Allegations of mismanagement, cronyism and financial impropriety have swirled around Wipo and its leadership in recent years. These have seriously damaged morale in the organisation, according to the US state department.