Pressure Mounts on Strauss-Kahn to Resign

European officials closed ranks to defend their hold on the International Monetary Fund’s top job as pressure mounted on the agency’s jailed leader, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, to step down.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said the IMF needs to formally name an interim leader because Strauss-Kahn is “obviously not in a position” to run the fund. Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter told reporters in Brussels yesterday that Strauss-Kahn “risks damaging the IMF,” and Senator Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois, sought his resignation.

At stake is leadership of an institution that approved a record $91.7 billion in emergency loans last year and provides a third of bailout packages in Europe. Strauss-Kahn’s arrest may give emerging markets, the drivers of global growth, momentum to their push to end a postwar deal under which a European heads the fund and the U.S. picks the World Bank president.

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http://preview.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-18/europe-seeks-to-keep-top-imf-post-as-strauss-kahn-starts-facing-exit-calls.html

France, Italy Seek Tighter Borders

ROME—The leaders of France and Italy called on the European Union to overhaul its border policy in an effort to stop the influx of migrants unleashed by North African unrest, but failed to reach a concrete agreement over how Europe should handle the wave.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi issued a joint letter at the end of a summit here on Tuesday that pressed the EU to reinforce patrols of European borders and stem the flow of migrants from Tunisia and Libya.

The letter stopped short, however, of making concrete demands, ducking the thorniest issue facing Europe: What to do about the more than 25,000 migrants who have already landed on Italian shores, many with plans to hopscotch across the Continent to richer economies.

Instead, the summit seemed to underscore the EU's lack of a common policy on immigration. That policy vacuum has led to clashes between France and Italy over the past month as migrants, after reaching the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, which is off the coast of Tunisia, have begun making their way toward the French border.

France, in an attempt to wall off the flow of migrants, has resurrected patrols and checkpoints along its border with Italy


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