World Bank President Robert Zoellick said Arab countries have been "underserved" by the development lender and that he wants to develop an initiative to get more involved in die Arab world, according to an interview published in the Wall Street Journal Tuesday.

Zoellick also said that the bank will continue to lend to middleincome countries like China, Brazil and India despite criticism of the practice because a large majority of the world's poor live in those countries.

"There are some 70 percent of the poor in middle-income countries. If we are going to deal with the poverty agenda, we need to be engaged with these countries," he told the Journal, ahead of a major

policy address planned for Wednesday.

"(Also) if you look at what's happening in the fields of diplomacy and political and security affairs, one of the big challenges is how we integrate the Indias, the Chinas and the Brazils in the mtilti-lateralsystem.

"It strikes me as illogical that you would be trying to engage them in creating a new multilateral order, and not do it in the multilateral economicsystem."

Zoellick has been trying to motivate staff at the bank who were dispirited by the tenure of Paul Wolfowitz, who left the bank's presidency earlier this year over his management style and a favoritism scandal, the Journal said.

The paper said Zoellick, unlike Wolfowitz, had not recruited aids

from the administration of US President George W. Bush, and had not "frozen out" top bankstaff since he took thebank'shelm on July 1.

"I have tried to spend considerable amount of time listening tn some people, hearing the anxieties, trying to give people a chance, but my purpose is always to start to turn that towards productive energy."

Zoellick, 54, former Deputy Secretary of State and US Trade Representative, said the World Bank needed to do more work in the Arab states.

"This is a set of countries (that have) probably been underserved by the bank, and so what I'm trying to identify is how can we work with some of these governments and the private sector to create additional opportunity and development.