German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has said he will not block the US nomination of Paul Wolfowitz as the next head of the World Bank.
Earlier, it emerged that Mr Wolfowitz has agreed to meet European Development Commissioner Louis Michel after being invited to Brussels to explain his views.
European governments have been guarded in public but expressed private unease about the nomination of a man best known as the architect of the US invasion of Iraq.
Meanwhile, Luxembourg's Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker has told his EU counterparts that the union's finance ministers will discuss who should head the World Bank at an EU summit this week.
