Front-runner for NATO chief angers Muslim world

STRASBOURG, France, April 2 (UPI) -- Western NATO powers and Turkey, the alliance's only Muslim member state, are heading toward a faceoff over who will be the next NATO chief at this weekend's summit in France and Germany.

Observers had hoped that the alliance would be able to announce a new chief at its 60th-anniversary summit, taking place April 3-4 in Strasbourg, France, and the German cities of Kehl and Baden-Baden.

Turkey, however, has voiced strong opposition to the top candidate, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, for his failure to ban a TV station that Ankara says is linked to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, a Kurdish separatist group also known as the PKK.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently said several leaders of Islamic countries had urged him to veto Rasmussen's nomination also because of his role in the Prophet Mohammed cartoon row.

Turkey remains the only NATO state, however, that has openly criticized Rasmussen, a seasoned diplomat initially backed by the United States and all major European powers.

The country of 80 million Muslims is still angry with Rasmussen for refusing to apologize for the publication by a Danish newspaper in 2005 of a cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban. Rasmussen at the time referred to the press's freedom.

Reprints of the cartoons in 2006 triggered violent protests all over the world that killed more than 50 people. They also sparked a boycott of Danish products and attacks on Danish institutions in Muslim countries.

NATO diplomats have over the past few days tried their best to convince Ankara to back Rasmussen.

Henning Riecke, a NATO expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations, a Berlin-based think tank, said he doesn't believe that Turkey will hold on to its opposition forever.

"The question is how high the price would be to convince Turkey to back Rasmussen," he told United Press International in a telephone interview Thursday. "It's important that the conflict is not overshadowing the summit."

Washington, which aims to appease the Muslim world after the disaster of the Iraq war, has in the past weeks supported Rasmussen; that seems to be changing now.

An unnamed NATO official told Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende that President Obama's administration is increasingly concerned about Turkey's objections to Rasmussen, preferring to appease the important ally if possible.

Critics of Rasmussen's nomination say it comes at the wrong time, given the huge importance the Afghanistan mission carries for NATO.

The alliance is trying to convince Afghanistan's population and Muslim neighbor governments to back the war there, and observers say Rasmussen will have a tough time reaching these goals because of his controversial past.

The problem is that the other candidates on the table are far from ideal.

NATO's runner-up, Poland's Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, is backed by several Central European nations, but he would undermine NATO's bid to improve relations with Russia. "We need to get our relationship with Russia back on track," outgoing NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, whose term runs out at the end of July, said Thursday in Strasbourg. Sikorski has in the past lobbied for a U.S. missile defense system in Poland, which Russia sees as a direct threat to its security.

The third candidate, Norway's Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, may qualify as the compromise choice, but he lacks an international profile.

Observers say this weekend's summit may not see a decision after all. It looks likely that NATO's next secretary-general will not be unveiled until U.S. President Obama's visit to Turkey next week.

"A candidate needs the backing of all the NATO countries," Riecke said.