Dane remains sole official NATO candidate

Date: 23/11/1995

A FLURRY of names of possible candidates to lead the Atlantic alliance have been swirling through its corridors, but Uffe Ellemann-Jensen remains the only official nominee for the post of NATO secretary-general.

After much speculation that Spain would offer Foreign Minister Javier Solana as a candidate during NATO ambassadors' meeting on Wednesday (22 November), the nomination did not come.

“Apart from Ellemann-Jensen, no other names were circulated,” said an NATO source. Earlier in the day US Defense Secretary William Perry announced that Washington was still considering “three or four” names, but NATO officials said they could not guess who Perry was referring to.

As Perry flew to Copenhagen to meet Ellemann-Jensen for the second time, most observors said it was a good omen for Denmark's former foreign minister, who is known in the US as the man from the tiny country who sent a warship into the Gulf War and more troops per capita to former Yugoslavia than any European country.

Ellemann-Jensen is praised by colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic for his thorough knowledge of foreign policy and military affairs. After his 'job interview' with US Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Ellemann-Jensen was given a tacit 'thumbs up' by Washington when Perry also asked to meet him.

His supporters are impatient at the delay in the nomination. Their man has been the only official candidate for much of the month that has passed since Willy Claes' resignation in late October.

Paris appeared to reject the Danish nominee, but the French foreign ministry now says it has not vetoed Ellemann-Jensen and that NATO partners are still in negotiation. “We are not opposed to the candidacy of Ellemann-Jensen,” said one foreign ministry official, “but there is no consensus yet”.

The official stressed that the candidate would have to show three qualities: “personal aptitude” to lead NATO's biggest military operation ever and its expansion to the east; “real commitment to the European construction”; and a firm command of NATO's two official languages, English and French.

Ellemann-Jensen defends his record as a pro-European who brought Denmark out of isolation, away from British hegemony and closer to Bonn and Paris. Copenhagen has also promised Paris that if their man got the job, he would select a Francophone, French-educated chief of staff.

Ellemann-Jensen's close ties to Washington have already made it easier for him to navigate the difficult waters that engulfed Lubbers before he could even get back to the Netherlands.

Because Americans will need to be persuaded of the need to go to Bosnia, the NATO chief will have to be someone they will listen to. As foreign minister in the 1980s, Ellemann-Jensen was close to the Reagan and Bush administrations and knows many Republicans well. His easy, straightforward speaking style is appreciated by American audiences.

While NATO's secretary-general does not make policy, he must be of sufficient profile to deal with heads of state and broker compromises between some of the world's greatest military powers.

If chosen, Ellemann-Jensen is expected to push for a gradual NATO enlargement to include the Baltic states, despite Russia's insistence that the alliance should not take in its former satellites. He would also press for progress on the Combined Joint Task Force, to enable Europeans to conduct peacekeeping operations without US participation, but with NATO assets, and to favour more flexible, ad hoc answers to security questions.

Ellemann-Jensen is known to favour development of the WEU as a means not only of conducting European operations, but of gently introducing to Russia the notion of a European defence organisation that includes eastern European states, and is less threatening than NATO. He is also expected to push for reform and budget-trimming to make the Cold War institution more palatable to member states questioning its usefulness.