The people who agreed to describe the closed meeting of vice presidents last week would do so only when promised anonymity. The descriptions were provided both by critics and defenders of Mr. Wolfowitz, who said they wanted to ensure that the public got an accurate account of the proceedings.

Those who attended the meeting said that Mr. Wheeler, the managing director, did not raise the issue of the anticorruption agenda, but that the residue of the battles on that issue continued to be felt. Mr. Wheeler said that if Mr. Wolfowitz did not resign, bank staff and colleagues would direct their ire at the board of directors and also the finance ministries around the world for not taking action against him.

The board is studying whether Mr. Wolfowitz violated bank rules in arranging a pay-and-promotion package for Shaha Ali Riza, his companion, and whether she violated bank rules in traveling to Iraq in 2003 as a temporary employee of a defense contractor.

Mr. Bennett, the lawyer, is seeking to make the case that Mr. Wolfowitz’s role in arranging the package when Ms. Riza was detailed to the State Department in 2005 was not a “hanging offense.” But he has apparently failed in his effort to persuade the bank board to give Mr. Wolfowitz more time to make his case on the matter of Ms. Riza.

“I have heard that the board is not inclined to meet with me,” Mr. Bennett said in an interview. “I’m very concerned about that because I think there’s a lot of bad information out there, and I want to make sure the board has all the information, some of which I believe is exculpatory.”

A new indication of how deep the divisions are over Mr. Wolfowitz surfaced Tuesday. The bank board met to give support to a broad strategy on maternal health policies and got into a wrangle with the American director, Eli Whitney Debevoise II, over language referring to comprehensive reproductive “services,” which some equate with abortion.

Bank officials said that word of the dispute touched off a new round of e-mail messages and telephone calls at the bank, with most officials charging that the United States was trying to impose a conservative agenda on bank policies. Mr. Wolfowitz, seeking to allay suspicions on this issue, has told many bank officials that he favors all aspects of the bank’s family planning approaches.