NATO Press Release (2009)048 4 April 2009
NATO Allies select new Secretary General
At the Summit in Strasbourg and Kehl, the 28 NATO Heads of State and
Government agreed uninamously to appoint Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh
Rasmussen as NATO's next Secretary General.
Mr Fogh Rasmussen will formally take up his duties on August 1, 2009, when
the term of the current Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, expires
after five and a half years at the helm of the Alliance.
Chosen over the Canadian leading candidate Peter MacKay
The U.S. is open to the appointment of an eastern European or a Canadian as the next head of NATO, potentially breaking western Europe’s half-century lock on the post, the American envoy to the alliance said.
“We wouldn’t discriminate,” Kurt Volker, U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Brussels today. “If the right person comes out of Germany, the right person comes out of central Europe, the right person comes out of Canada, we’re equally open.”
There has never been a Canadian NATO Secretary General, and it seems Mr. MacKay will not be the first.
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