(ENI) The World Bank and the world's major religions are to establish joint working groups on development issues, it was announced last week at the end of a high-level, two-day dialogue at Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop of Canterbury's London headquarters.

Co-chaired by the Archbishop, the Most Revd George Carey, and by the World Bank's president, James Wolfensohn, the dialogue brought together leaders of nine world faiths - Baha'is, Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Taoists and Christians (represented by Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran and Orthodox - both the Ecumenical and Moscow Patriarchate officials).

The World Bank, which channels billions of dollars in development loans from the rich industrialised countries to the impoverished nations, has been frequently criticised for its policies in recent years by religious leaders, including Archbishop Carey, and by aid organisations. Many have accused the World Bank of ignoring the views of the poorest people in the countries it is trying to help, and of imposing unrealistic and harmful demands for economic reform on governments as a requirement for receiving loans.

Recently the World Bank has been engaged in a major initiative to try to improve its image.

This week Mr Wolfensohn, a 64-year-old Australian-born American, acknowledged the criticisms and accepted the need for dialogue. He told a press conference at Lambeth Palace: "If we are wrong, let's admit it and deal with it. If we are not, let's get recognition for what we're doing."

Pointing out the seriousness of the dialogue, he said: "This is not Hollywood. It is not a PR [public relations] exercise.'' World poverty was not decreasing, he said, but the meeting between the bank and the faiths had produced a "unity of concern'' for the linkage of physical, spiritual and cultural development.

(The World Bank estimates that almost a quarter of the world's population [23 per cent or 1.3 billion people] live in poverty - on less than US$1 a day.)

The development subjects selected for the first joint working groups between the faiths and the World Bank are: community building; hunger and food security; environmental sustainability; preservation of cultural heritage; violence and post-conflict reconstruction; education and social services.

The religious communities will also be invited to help prepare the World Bank's annual development reports. The subject for the year 2000 report is Understanding Poverty. Archbishop Carey, aged 62, who is the spiritual head of the 70 million-strong world-wide Anglican Communion, told the press conference that the success of the meeting had been "the top-down approach of the World Bank meeting the bottom-up approach of the religious communities''.

One of the dialogue participants, Bishop Thomas Olmorijoi Laiser, of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania, told ENI after the press conference: "The World Bank has made a good start with involving faith communities, but it is important for it to deal with the faiths as such, not individual religions."

He said that in Tanzania - a country divided between Christianity and Islam - the faiths had a disposition to co-operate and World Bank projects could promote this cooperation.

Bishop Laiser referred to World Bank-led structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) which impose economic reforms on national economies and are often criticised for being too harsh on Third World countries. "They [the World Bank] used to introduce these without consulting [the faith communities]. Now I'd expect it to be with consultation.''

This gave the faith communities the opportunity to soften the impact of SAPs on the poorest people, he suggested.

Asked by ENI at the press conference why the World Bank had chosen to work through the Anglican Church rather than an ecumenical body like the World Council of Churches, Mr Wolfensohn said: "I don't know. I didn't think I was meeting the Anglican Church, but a group of religious leaders. The Archbishop was kind enough to offer [the use of] his 800-year-old palace. He has a record of achievement in this area [development] that none can better.''

Archbishop Carey said: "This is not about triumphalism or denominationalism.'' He added that the continuing activities planned between the bank and the faith communities were not intended to compete with Christian development agencies like Christian Aid and Cafod, two of Britain's prominent charities.

In the past few days, an open letter signed by 13 religious leaders, including Archbishop Carey, was published which expressed concern about "apparent delays'' in implementing the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative, sponsored by the World Bank, and about "the dilution of its [HIPC's] original promise to provide the most indebted countries with 'the possibility of exiting' from severe indebtedness''.

But at a press conference Archbishop Carey said the remarks were mainly addressed to finance ministers, rather than to the World Bank.

Despite that and other recent criticisms of the World Bank by Archbishop Carey, and a recent vigorous rebuttal by Mr Wolfensohn, both men were speaking very much the same language at a press conference, raising hopes that the World Bank had made a decisive policy shift.

Both men called the dialogue "historic'', while Archbishop Carey spoke of "learning together''. James Wolfensohn said the two sides in the dialogue would "enrich each other''.