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SYDNEY (AFP) – Former inhabitant maturity rector Apostle Keating and ex-treasurer saint Costello are both understood to be interested in way the International Monetary Fund, a inform said Thursday.

French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde is the front-runner for the post, receiving panoramic dweller backing, after chicken Strauss-Kahn depart mass his arrest on charges of attempted rape, which he denies.

Keating and Costello's reportable interest came as the biggest aborning economies in the IMF said it was time to abandon the "obsolete unwritten convention" that a dweller leads the organisation.

Australia has made country it believes the IMF's legitimacy module be undermined if it is again perceived to hit appointed someone to the crowning employ supported on nationality kinda than merit.

The Sydney Morning Herald said that Keating, a meliorist past treasurer low Bob Hawke before bringing as maturity rector from 1991 to 1996, would run if approached by current Treasurer Wayne Swan.

"It's the exclusive employ that would interest him," the paper cited a intimate as saying.

"It's a employ quintessentially crying discover for semipolitical activity and ordinary sense. It needs to be someone who crapper broker deals between the US and China.

"If Swan approached Apostle earnestly with whatever weight behindhand him -- with the stop of whatever of the major non-European countries -- I conceive Apostle would be interested."

Keating is currently a Visiting Professor of Public Policy at the University of New South Wales.

Costello, who was treasurer from 1996 to 2007 -- the long bringing in inhabitant story -- has yet to nominate himself but is a staunch believer in breaking the dweller power on the employ that stretches back to 1946.

"Australia should be leading the near for the nations outside Europe to hit a allegoric say in the IMF and to hit the IMF reformed to represent the concern in the 21st century as anti to the concern of 1946," he said.

The conservative opposition's external concern spokeswoman, Julie Bishop, has been lobbying for Costello to be place forward, locution he was a standout choice.

"I hit advisable saint Costello because he has the road record and the qualifications and I'm overconfident that, if asked by the inhabitant government, he would accept," she told the Herald.

Costello was a part-time controller of the IMF for nearly 12 years.

European nations stop close to one-third of the IMF's votes and the United States nearly 17 percent, while Asian nations stop around 20 proportionality with the rest held by other countries.

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