Harare - Zimbabwe's controversial central bank governor Gideon Gono claimed that outgoing United States president George W Bush had endorsed a proposal to give him a senior position in the World Bank, state media reported Wednesday.

Governor Gideon Gono also said that the purported offer was approved by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and that it was conveyed to him by James McGee, the outspoken US ambassador to Zimbabwe, the government-controlled Herald newspaper reported.

It said Gono made the remarks on Monday at a private launch of a book Gono has written, in which the claims are described in detail.

President Robert Mugabe recently reappointed Gono as governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe for a second five-year term, despite Gono's proclivity for printing money to fill the hole in government coffers being held largely responsible for stratospheric inflation of at least 231 million per cent.

The virtually worthless Zimbabwe dollar has also plunged 30 million per cent since August when he redenominated the money by striking off 10 zeroes. The International Monetary Fund has described the Reserve Bank as "bankrupt."

Gono claimed the offer was made by a World Bank senior vice president "with the full blessing of none other than George W. Bush himself, and the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice." Comment was not immediately available from the US embassy in Harare.

This occurred at the time that "I was being dragged to the UN to be put on the sanctions list," he said. Gono had written to the World Bank to ask "how the bank could offer him a job when he was on its targeted sanctions list."

He claimed the bank replied that it would remove him from the list, and see what to do with his friends already on the sanctions list.

The United Nations has no sanctions list against Zimbabwe. The only attempt yet by the UN Security Council, in June this year, to condemn the country for its human rights record, was vetoed by Russia and China.

The United States and the European Union have imposed targeted sanctions against members of President Robert Mugabe's ruling clique, including Gono.

Gono, like Mugabe, repeatedly claims that these sanctions are responsible for Zimbabwe's economic and humanitarian ruin.

On Wednesday, a government minister claimed that Western governments had been "contaminating it (Zimbabwe) with cholera and anthrax... to justify military intervention."

Gono described his book, "Zimbabwe's Casino Economy: Extraordinary Measures for Extraordinary Challenges," as "shedding light on the deep philosophical drivers that shaped the orientation conduct of the RBZ's monetary policy programme under my watch for the last five years." (dpa)