According to The Washington Post, top officials at the IMF and World Bank are strongly in favor of postponing or maybe even canceling the meeting altogether in the wake of terrorist attacks on the Pentagon in Washington DC and the World Trade Center in New York.

"A delay is in the air," a high-ranking IMF official was quoted as saying. The World Bank and the IMF were reportedly awaiting the final word from the US government before making a decision to postpone the meeting.

It was reported by the Post that DC Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey would recommend that the meeting be canceled because of the estimated 100,000 protestors who were likely to take to the streets in Washington to demand an end to the World Bank, an organization some activists claim only hinders the world's poor.

But the IMF official was quoted as saying that canceling the meeting might look "too much like capitulation" to terrorism. "I think the US authorities will not want to add further risk to the downtown Washington area so soon," he reportedly said.

"There has been no decision as yet," said Bill Murray, spokesman for the IMF. "There certainly have been a lot of talk about cancellation, but no decision has been made."

Murray told Conference News Daily that there's a lot of "logistical issues" to be sorted out before canceling a meeting of such size.

"When do we have the meeting then, if we cancel it?" Murray said. "What stays, what goes? You can't just tell people to go home, especially when you're dealing with 183 member states."

Another IMF official, however, told Conference News Daily that postponement was "increasingly likely."