WASHINGTON, May 21: President George W. Bush said on Monday he wants an American to succeed Paul Wolfowitz as president of the World Bank, playing down speculation he might turn to departing British Prime Minister Tony Blair for the job.

Wolfowitz's resignation announced last week has prompted calls from some Europeans for one of their own to serve as World Bank president.

“We'd very much like it to be an American,” Bush told Reuters in an interview.

He said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is in charge of the search for Wolfowitz's successor and will take to Bush a list of those he thinks would be good for the job.

Asked if his close ally Blair might be a candidate, Bush said: “I haven't talked to Tony Blair about it, but I do think it'd be good to have an American run the bank.”

Japanese Finance Minister Koji Omi said on Tuesday the next World Bank president should be a US citizen.

Omi said he had talked with US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson over the weekend about the leadership of the development agency. “I told him that it is appropriate for the US to keep the leadership of the World Bank,” Omi told a news conference.

By tradition, the World Bank has been run by an American, and the US, the bank's biggest financial contributor, wants to keep that practice intact. But it is not a rule, and the United States could pick someone who is not an American to lead the institution.

Outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been mentioned as a possibility. So have Ashraf Ghani, former Afghan finance minister, who also once worked at the World Bank; Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former Nigerian finance minister and bank official; South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel' and Kemal Dervis, a former Turkish economy minister who now heads the UN Development Programme and has worked at the bank.

Other names mentioned for the post include: former deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick, who was Bush's former trade chief; Robert Kimmitt, No. 2 at the Treasury Department; Stanley Fischer, who once worked at the IMF and is now with the Bank of Israel; former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker; former Rep. Jim Leach and Sen. Richard Lugar, both Republicans. Paulson's name also has been floated.—Agencies