The series of economic crises in Asia has propelled the International Monetary Fund (IMF) into an unwelcome limelight and has even led to calls for its abolition.

This seems rather unfair for an institution whose role includes rescuing countries that get into economic trouble from even worse trouble.

Not surprisingly, the IMF is feeling bruised by the punches coming from such heavyweights as: Harvard economist, Prof Jeffrey Sachs; former US Secretaries of State, Dr Henry Kissinger and Mr George Shultz; the Wall Street Journal; and an array of US politicians in both Republican and Democratic camps.

US criticism is especially unhelpful for the IMF when Congress is being asked to approve a further $18 billion (£13.4 billion) for the fund.

A rejection on Capitol Hill could jeopardise the IMF's request for its 182 member countries to increase its resources by almost $150 billion at a time when the Asian bail-outs have reduced its reserves to a dangerously low level.

President Clinton and his Treasury Secretary, Mr Robert Rubin, are lobbying hard for the IMF increase. They are firmly behind the IMF's role in the Asian bail outs which are seen as essential to prevent social and political unrest in countries like Indonesia and South Korea.

This is also US self-interest as economic collapse in Asia would have spin-off effects on US jobs as well as meaning losses for US investors and banks.

Already, California is experiencing some reduction in trade to Asia which takes more than half of its $100 billion exports.

What has the IMF done which has provoked calls for its abolition? During the Asian "tigers" crisis, it has committed $4 billion for Thailand; $1 billion for the Philippines; $10 billion for Indonesia and $21 billion for South Korea.

This is a total of $36 billion from the IMF's own reserves. But the fund also helps to put together additional loans from other countries and from private banks. Thus the total Korean loan package is $57 billion.

The criticisms of the IMF are mainly two-fold. One concerns the stringent conditions which the IMF attaches to the loans.

The other is the charge that the promise of IMF bail-outs "insulates financiers and politicians from the consequences of bad economic and financial practices, and encourages investments that would not otherwise have been made".

This second charge has been taken up vigorously in the US by an unlikely alliance of conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats.

Why should US taxpayers' dollars, the argument goes, be used to prop up corrupt regimes like Indonesia and save wealthy international banks from the consequences of foolish lending?

As long as things went well in the debtor countries, the banks made big profits but now that the borrowers can't pay back the short-term loans, why should the IMF step in to cushion the losses?

For Dr Kissinger, the stringent conditions that the IMF attaches to the loan packages, such as increased taxes and higher interest rates, risk turning an economic crisis into a political one in a volatile part of the world and so threaten US interests.

He writes in a Washington Post article: "In some countries of south-east Asia, the IMF programme of austerity has caused basic commerce virtually to stop. Viable companies in viable industries are being driven into bankruptcy by the crippling of the domestic banking system because of IMF strictures, and this in societies that have no social safety net. "In fairness, it must be emphasised that by the time the IMF is called in, the situation is often already desperate. And especially in the crises of south-east Asia, the IMF has been the only institution that has prevented a meltdown."

Mr Michel Camdessus, the French banker who has been managing director of the IMF for 11 years is the man in the hot seat. Even the sister organisation, the World Bank, has criticised IMF policies in Asia through its chief economist, Mr Joseph Stiglitz, formerly President Clinton's top economist.

"These are crises in confidence. You don't want to push these countries into severe recession. One ought to focus. . . on things that caused the crisis, not on things that make it more difficult to deal with," Mr Stiglitz has argued.

Mr Camdessus is fighting back. He says that the claim by Harvard professor, Jeffrey Sachs, that "in the end, the IMF programmes could well cause Asia much more harm than benefit" is "damn wrong".

"Every time we launch a major programme of the sort we are applying to the Asian crisis, I have the impression of being at a beauty pageant or a race in which the commentators are the contestants. The winner is the one who makes the first definitive judgment and thus sets the tone for comments around the world," Mr Camdessus said in a recent interview with Le Monde.

It is also pointed out that the IMF funding to the Asian countries has not saved European and US banks from taking losses in that region. Nor have investors in the region been cushioned from losses.

Mr Camdessus says: "We have never bailed out a floundering stock market. All the Asian stock markets have fallen 50 per cent. No one who invested in those stock markets has been rescued by the IMF."

The IMF is impatient with critics who concentrate on the traditional belt-tightening conditions of its loans while ignoring the reforms in the banking sector which it is also promoting in the Asian countries.

"These programmes represent a marked departure from the kind of programmes we have traditionally supported," says Mr Camdessus.

However, it looks as if the US administration is going to press for some reforms in the IMF itself as the price to be paid for getting the extra funding through Congress. More transparency and less secretiveness in its workings will probably be demanded.

Transparency is increasing.

Last year for the first time, the IMF's annual report on Ireland was published. It was a good one.