WASHINGTON. Nov 10: The head of the International Monetary Fund said yesterday he would quit early next year, ending weeks of speculation and leaving a legacy of success and failure for ills successor, who will probably be a European.

Frenchman Michel Camdessus, who has run the global lender for an unprecedented 12-1/2 years, said he hoped to leave by midFebruary. He urged member countries to find a successor soon and told them not to bicker about who would take the Job.

"My friends, this is the right time/ Camdessus said in a resignation letter to IMF board members.

The world economic outlook allows us to anticipate favourable trends for the wo.id economy. So 1 see it as my duty now to suggest that you take advantage of these favourable circumstance to select my r» placement," he added.

Camdessus' .departure comes amid clear signs the re-

cessionary worst is over for Asia's one-time tiger economies that the IMF has been trying to revive for the last two years.

But money is still flooding out of fragile Russia and the volume of Russian capital flight over recent years easily exceeds the billions of dollars pumped in by the IMF as it tried to engineer a transformation to a market economy.

Camdessus. 66, headed the Bank of France before joining the IMF. and he is the latest in a line of Europeans to hold the top job at the international lender.

He said on Tuesday that he would not object to a successor from the private sector, which has repeatedly lashed out at IMF.policies and at the fund's attempts to ensure that private lenders share the cost of IMF-

sponsored rescue deals.

An enthusiastic advocate of the free market. Camdessus took the brunt of criticism for the IMF's failure to spot the fault lines which led to the financial crisis that began in Asia in 1997 and spread through emerging markets around the worlcf

These attacks came to a head last year when Congress came close to denying the agency and $18 billion Increase in its capital which the Clinton administration said was needed to fend off any worsening of the global financial crisis. — MORE/S1.

Speaking to assembled IMF staff. Camdessus suggested he had thought about resigning well before Tuesday's announcement.