The NATO Secretary General, the Norwegian Jens Stoltenberghas no intention of extending his position at the head of the Atlantic Alliance beyond October, when his current term ends, as reported this Sunday by the organization’s spokesperson, Oana Lungescu.
“Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s term of office has been extended three times and he has served for a total of almost nine years”told the agency EFE the spokesperson.
According to him, “the mandate of the secretary general ends in October of this year and he has no intention of requesting another extension of his mandate.”
On March 24, just one month after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Alliance leaders agreed at a summit in Brussels to extend Stoltenberg’s mandate for another year, until September 30 of this year.
The allies They then thanked the former Norwegian prime minister for “his leadership and dedication”particularly at a “critical moment for international security”.
Stoltenberg said he was “honored” by the decision of the heads of State and Government of the Alliance. “As we face the biggest security crisis in a generation, we stand together to keep our Alliance strong and our people safe,” he said then.
Stoltenberg, Secretary General of NATO since October 2014, saw his mandate extended – which was to end on September 30, 2022 – when he had already been appointed by the Norwegian Government as President of the Central Bank of that country for a period of six years. from December of that year.
However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine had sparked debate over whether it could stay in NATO longer, a possibility that was eventually confirmed.
Stoltenberg is an economist by training and was Minister of Finance during the Government of Thorbjorn Jagland (1996-1997) before assuming the leadership of the Labor Party and later becoming Norwegian Prime Minister (2000-2001, 2005-2013).
In 2014 he left Norwegian politics in order to assume command of NATO, for which he has been re-elected several times.
The leaders of the Alliance will hold a summit in Vilnius again on July 11 and 12 and there they could formally confirm Stoltenberg’s successor or successor, since there is talk of the possibility of a woman heading NATO for the first time.
According to Welt am Sonntag, the members of the Alliance want to give Stoltenberg the opportunity to chair the organization’s 75th anniversary summit, which will be held in Washington in April 2024. He would also be in a position to become president of the World Bank when David Malpass left office around those same dates.
It has not yet been decided who will succeed Stoltenberg, but Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace are among the leading candidates for the job, according to Welt.
With information from EFE and Reuters
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Source-www.infobae.com