NATO countries can not agree on a new secretary general
BERLIN, March 30 – RIA Novosti. Heads of State and Government of NATO countries are still agreed on the candidacy of a successor Jaap de Hoop Scheffer (Netherlands) Secretary-General on the North Atlantic Alliance. The statement was made on Monday, an official of the Federal Government, Ulrich Wilhelm.
At present, this effect being confidential advice … I do not want to contribute to the proliferation of speculation – he said, abandoning any comments of a particular candidate.
official term of the current secretary general of NATO expires on 31 July this year. It was expected that on the 60 anniversary of the Union, the NATO anniversary summit of April 3-4, will be officially presented to the successor áхõффõрð.
Local observers called the most likely candidate 56-year-old Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. For it has already preliminarily supported all the major states except Turkey alliance.
Turkish Prime at the end of last week warned that it would vote against, as well as Danish Prime implicated in the caricature scandal.
thirtieth September 2005 in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The heads of a number of Muslim countries demanded that the heads of the Danish Government to take measures to prohibit these caricatures and an apology for insulting the religious feelings of Muslims, but Rasmussen has not taken such measures.
According to the German media for lack of a better candidate for NATO leaders of Britain, Germany, Italy and the United States trying to persuade the Turkish counterpart not to use its veto in the vote on the candidacy Rasmussen if the other 25 countries participating in the alliance would support his candidacy.