By Matthew Russell Lee
WASHINGTON DC, April 14 -- Dominique Strauss Kahn was filled with bon mots and seeming bonhommie at his press conference at the IMF on Thursday. Perhaps it was because the questions and questioners were carefully selected, and those DSK didn't like, he didn't answer.
An RTL radio reporter asked him in French if by the Fall the IMF might have a new Managing Director -- that is, if by then DSK will already by campaigning to replace Nicolas Sarkozy.
“The French part of the question,” Strauss Kahn told the rest of the hall in English, “is irrelevant.” He added, in French, that he would answer questions later in that language, but only on the topic of the IMF's and World Bank's Spring Meetings.
But even on major IMF topics, DSK did not take questions. There was nothing on Ireland or Iceland, and as spokesperson Caroline Atkinson called the session to a close, a reporter cried out, “Please, one question about Portugal!” But no.
Inner City Press, which does its best to get questions answered at the IMF's biweekly online briefings, held hand aloft for the entire press conference. Perhaps DSK would have dismissively characterized as “a French question” any inquiry about Cote d'Ivoire, where the IMF in January told Inner City Press it had suspended its programs due to instability.
Before Strauss Kahn spoke, the President of the World Bank Robert Zoellick held his own press conference. It had many fewer jokes, but more information -- and not only his answer to Inner City Press on Libya and Yemen.
On Cote d'Ivoire, Zoellick said he would be meeting in the next days in DC with former IMF official Alassane Ouattara's finance minister Charles Koffi Dibi.
Will Strauss Kahn be participating in this meeting? If not, why not? Or is that too a “French question”? Watch this site.
