By Carol Giacomo and Lesley Wroughton

WASHINGTON, May 17 (Reuters) - The likely ouster of Paul Wolfowitz as World Bank president in the face of bitter European opposition poses an unprecedented challenge to the United States' global financial leadership.

Weakened by chaos in Iraq, low popularity and his lame-duck status, President George W. Bush appears unable to prevent Wolfowitz's departure -- the first ever of a World Bank president -- after weeks of resistance and public acrimony over his promotion of a companion.

Some U.S. officials and experts expressed alarm that the controversy could force the United States to give up its World Bank preeminence and long tradition of appointing the president, perhaps creating an opening for rising power China.

Others argued that a radical overhaul of the system of selecting the president and bank lending policies is the only way for the institution to regain credibility.

"There is growing discomfort with this idea that the United States should hand pick the World Bank president with no consultation," said Kenneth Rogoff, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.

Rogoff, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that while Wolfowitz may be brilliant, he had little experience in development, poverty-fighting and finance issues and would not have been chosen in the first place if the selection process was transparent and open to others.

Rogoff said the crisis would undermine the institution's credibility until Wolfowitz stepped down because the Europeans cared deeply about the bank's development mission.

The United States, the bank's largest shareholder, has named the World Bank chief since it led the establishment of the post-World War Two international finance system at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944. As a trade-off, Europe picks the International Monetary Fund leader.

Wolfowitz was always a controversial choice because of his role as U.S. deputy defense secretary and intellectual architect of the Iraq war.

European allies, who grudgingly acquiesced to Wolfowitz's appointment as president only two years ago, reversed course in recent weeks and stubbornly insisted he must go, despite a vigorous White House defense.

"MUCH LARGER NOVEL"

As of Thursday, Wolfowitz was resisting heavy European pressure to resign as he sought to clear his name in negotiations with the bank's board over a possible exit strategy. But few doubted his departure would come soon.

Wolfowitz's handling of the promotion and pay raise for his companion, bank employee Shaha Riza, was the immediate cause of the storm but many saw it as a proxy for other complaints.

"Wolfowitz was shoved down everyone's throats in 2005 and the only reason it succeeded was because the Europeans and Americans were hoping to turn a page" after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, said Ivo Daalder, co-author of "America Unbound" on Bush's first-term foreign policy.

Bush had been re-elected in 2004 "and the Europeans figured they had to live with him for another four years so why oppose him on this," Daalder said in a telephone interview.

He argued that a bank report this week accusing Wolfowitz of ethical lapses was not just aimed at the bank president, who riled bank staff with what they saw as an arrogant, insular management style.

It was also an opportunity to make a broader case that "the Bush administration has misbehaved internationally ... It is a subplot in a much larger novel about Europe versus the U.S. in the Bush era," Daalder said.

James Steinberg, a deputy national security adviser for former President Bill Clinton, said Washington would not necessarily lose much global influence by accepting a non-American president of the World Bank.

"I think there are some advantages to having an American as head of the bank but I think it's overrated," he said.

As long as Wolfowitz's successor "could work well with the United States, the fact of it being an American is far less important ... We need someone who shares basic views of development with the U.S," said Steinberg, dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin.

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