Washington ? President Bush on Wednesday recommended Defense Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who has been a lightning rod for criticism of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and other defense policies, to take over as head of the World Bank.

Bush said that Wolfowitz, now Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s top deputy, was “a compassionate, decent man who will do a fine job at the World Bank. That’s why I put him up.”

The administration began notifying other countries that Wolfowitz was the U.S. candidate to replace World Bank President James Wolfensohn, who is stepping down as head of the 184-nation development bank on June 1 at the end of his second five-year term.

The United States is the World Bank’s largest shareholder in the development bank. The bank traditionally has had an American president. Its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund, traditionally has been headed by a European.

Bush noted that he had called Premier Silvio Berlusconi to talk about Iraq and other issues earlier in the day and said that he had discussed Wolfowitz, “my nominee,” with the Italian leader.

“He is a man of good experience,” Bush said. “He helped manage a large organization …. a skilled diplomat, worked at the State Department.”

Wolfowitz, 61, was among the most forceful of those in the Bush administration in arguing that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and he had predicted that Americans would be welcomed as liberators rather than occupiers once they toppled Saddam’s government.