G8 leaders meeting in France for their annual summit this week kept their discussions on the IMF succession strictly in the corridors and avoided any joint endorsement of France's Christine Lagarde as a candidate.
Lagarde, France's finance minister, is the clear frontrunner to replace Dominique Strauss-Kahn as IMF managing director, after he quit to fight an attempted rape charge, and is backed by several European countries and the European Union.
China and other emerging market powers are digging in their heels against Western dominance of the Fund, however.
The only other declared candidate ahead of a 10 June deadline is Mexican central bank chief Agustin Carstens.
President Nicolas Sarkozy, who kept the issue off his G8 summit agenda, could not resist saying he saw Lagarde as superbly qualified for the job, but after chats in the wings with President Barack Obama he would not divulge Washington's position.
'Naturally we talked about it, but ... I am not Obama's spokesman and it's not for me to announce his decision,' Sarkozy said.
He said he would be surprised if Obama disagreed with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's remarks in favour of having well-qualified women at the head of world bodies like the IMF.
British Prime Minister David Cameron repeated his backing for Lagarde as an IMF candidate and told reporters that many delegates at the G8 meeting agreed she was outstanding.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who unlike the leaders of Britain, Ireland and Italy has not formally endorsed Lagarde, said yesterday that the G8's deliberate strategy of not giving a joint signal on the IMF job should help Europe's candidacy.
Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin weighed in today, saying in Russia that Lagarde's candidacy was 'very serious' and Kremlin president Dmitri Medvedev added that he believed a consensus had almost been reached on the post.
Lagarde plans a tour in the days ahead to more reticent countries like Brazil and China.
Separately, G8 summit host Mr Sarkozy of France outlined a $40 billion package of aid and loans for the countries of the Arab Spring, Tunisia's finance minister said.
'What President Sarkozy announced is a global package of $40 billion for the region. This package has not been broken down by country,' Jalloul Ayed told reporters after Arab and African leaders met their G8 counterparts.
Ayed said foreign and finance ministers from the region would meet before July to break down the programme - designed to kickstart economic development and anchor democratic reform - in more detail.
