The US has backed Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen for next secretary general of NATO, a diplomat said on Saturday, setting him on track to take the alliance’s top job in August.
“The United States has made up its mind. It will support Anders Fogh Rasmussen” as the candidate to take over from Dutch diplomat Jaap de Hoop Scheffer as NATO’s top civilian official, the alliance diplomat said.
When asked about Washington’s position, a senior US official would only say: “A number of people at the alliance are looking at Rasmussen as a leading candidate, but there’s been no decision yet, and it takes a consensus.”
The US is the biggest and most powerful of the 26 allies that make up NATO and its backing for the Danish prime minister would certainly make him a favorite for the post.
On Friday, Rasmussen, 56, declined to speak to reporters in Brussels about his possible candidature, but he has never officially ruled him himself out of the race. Scheffer’s mandate ends at the end of July.
NATO secretaries general are chosen through an informal process well away from the public eye, but like all decisions taken by the world’s biggest military alliance, they are done so unanimously.
Rasmussen has always been a loyal US ally, including by sending Danish troops to Iraq, and he also appeals to Europeans, notably France, through his support of closer NATO-EU cooperation.
In NATO circles, the “only unknown” remains the attitude of Turkey.
Turkey has repeatedly criticized Denmark of failing to revoke the broadcasting license of a Kurdish television station which Ankara says is a mouthpiece for armed Kurdish rebels fighting the government.
Rasmussen also invoked freedom of expression to defend publication of a series of cartoons in a Danish newspaper in September 2005 depicting the Prophet Mohammed, which triggered outrage among Muslims worldwide.
Aside from former Bulgarian foreign minister Solomon Passy, none of the potential candidates floated in the media have confirmed any intention to seek the top NATO job.
Rasmussen was no exception, yet reports in the British and German press say the liberal Danish leader has the firm backing of NATO’s European heavyweights — Britain, France and Germany.
“They weren’t met with any denial. This is very significant,” Daniel Korski, analyst at the London-based European Council for Foreign Relations, said of the reports.
He said that the Danish premier has long enjoyed US support.
“Rasmussen was at the head of the list for the former [US president George W.] Bush administration just as he is for the current [US President Barack] Obama administration,” he said.
“The Americans want someone who will continue to push for military engagement in Afghanistan,” he said, recalling that Denmark has some 700 soldiers in the insurgency-hit country, mainly in the volatile south.
While that US commitment does not guarantee Rasmussen the appointment, officials at NATO consider the chances of his would-be rivals greatly diminished.
Chief among them was Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, rumored to have coveted the position of first NATO secretary general from “new Europe,” the Warsaw Pact countries that joined the alliance in the 1990s.
One senior NATO official said Sikorski “wouldn’t fit well with US willingness to seek closer ties with Russia.”
Another possible nominee is Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay, although few have taken his candidacy seriously.
While US Vice President Joe Biden has played it down, there is also the unwritten but so-far respected rule that the secretary general must come from a European nation.
In exchange, the top NATO military post is always held by a US national.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not