Mar. 12--WASHINGTON -- Robert Zoellick is the odd person out in Barack Obama's Washington. He has worked for every Republican president since Ronald Reagan, yet in this time of high financial drama he finds himself occupying one of the key global economic positions as president of the World Bank.

Tall, lean and angular, with a moustache and upturned eyebrows, Zoellick has a reputation as a policymaker who can be trusted with the most delicate tasks.

This is almost certainly why George W Bush yanked him out of Goldman Sachs in 2007 to take charge of the World Bank after its reputation had been dragged through the mud and its unity torn asunder by the short stewardship of Paul Wolfowitz.

Wolfowitz was ousted from office after the disclosure of an improper relationship with Shaha Riza, a senior member of staff.

Turning around the mood of the Bank has "been a lot of work," Zoellick acknowledges in an exclusive interview in his spacious office on the 12th floor of the World Bank complex in the heart of Washington.

"There were all sorts of scars, anxieties that affected different units in different ways, and they included our internal corruption effort," he explains.

"So my basic strategy from the start was that we talk about these problems endlessly so we could try and put people back to work by focusing on the mission."

Part of the current problem, he believes, is that because the Bank is a development institution "the people who come here are not as prone to the sort of rapid response" needed in a financial crisis.

Nevertheless, he believes that he is turning the culture around and that the staff now see themselves "not just as analysts but problem solvers."

They need to be. When Zoellick looks across the horizon he sees mounting problems for both the industrialised and developing world. The global economic meltdown is costing lives.

He says: "Our estimates are that because of the drop in growth, another 200,000 to 400,000 children will die each year. So that is certainly the wrong direction.

"Trade will probably fall the greatest amount in 80 years."

Zoellick thinks that the outlook for the global economy is worse than the International Monetary Fund's forecast of a negligible 0.5pc expansion.

"My guess is that is that growth will probably fall about 1pc to 2pc.

"We haven't seen numbers like that since World War II, which really means since the Thirties. So these are serious and dangerous times," he says.