(Brussels) NATO members renewed the Norwegian Jens Stoltenberg for a year on Tuesday at the head of the Alliance, having been unable to find a candidate to succeed him, 16 months after the start of the Russian invasion in Ukraine.
“I am honored by the NATO Allies’ decision to extend my tenure as Secretary General until 1er October 2024,” tweeted the former Norwegian prime minister, 64, who has headed the Alliance since 2014.
“Transatlantic ties between Europe and North America have guaranteed our freedom and security for nearly 75 years, and in a more dangerous world, our Alliance is more important than ever,” he said. , a few days before a crucial summit in Vilnius.
The question of Ukraine’s accession to NATO will be at the heart of the Alliance’s high mass in the Lithuanian capital. If a membership as long as the Russian military offensive continues is excluded, Kyiv wants assurances for the future.
“We need a very clear and intelligible signal at the Vilnius summit that Ukraine can become a full member of NATO after the war,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently insisted.
The extension of Jens Stoltenberg, expected for several weeks, was endorsed at a meeting of ambassadors from the 31 member countries at the organization’s headquarters in Brussels.
It means that he will be present in July 2024 at the top of the 75e anniversary of NATO, in Washington, after a decade at the head of the organization.
If he repeated that he was not looking for an extension, he had never closed the door to such a hypothesis.
Several names have circulated in recent months to succeed him, including those of Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and British Minister of Defense Ben Wallace, but none was finally retained.
Some diplomats worry that the choice of his successor, postponed for a year, will be made even more difficult by the approach of the European elections (June 2024), which will kick off the renewal of key positions in the main institutions of the EU, but also American (November 2024).
“Difficult Times”
US President Joe Biden hailed the “steadfast leadership” of Jens Stoltenberg, who “enabled our Alliance to meet the most significant security challenges in Europe since World War II”.
“Excellent news”, welcomed the head of Ukrainian diplomacy Dmytro Kouleba. “Difficult times require strong leadership. Jens Stoltenberg demonstrated it. I look forward to continuing our cooperation.”
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who had supported Ben Wallace’s candidacy, simply welcomed the evolution of NATO in the face of “new threats” under the leadership of the Norwegian and said he was determined to “continue this work together “.
The invasion of Ukraine by Russia upset security in Europe and reshuffled the cards, pushing Finland and Sweden to want to join the protective umbrella of NATO. Article 5 of the Alliance states that an attack on one member “shall be considered an attack on all members”.
After three decades of military non-alignment, Finland, which shares a 1,300 kilometer long border with Russia, became in early April on 31e NATO member country.
The fate of Sweden still faces objections from Turkey. Talks on this file are scheduled for Thursday in Brussels with representatives of the two countries.
An incident last week further cooled relations between Ankara and Stockholm. An Iraqi burned a copy of the Koran outside Stockholm’s main mosque, prompting outrage across the Muslim world and harsh criticism from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan against Sweden.