The United States announces its “full” support for Mark Rutte at NATO, and for Klaus Iohannis they have “the greatest respect”

The US Ambassador to NATO, Julianne Smith, announced today that Mark Rutte, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, will be fully supported for the position of Secretary General of the North Atlantic Alliance. However, she says she appreciates the fact that the president of Romania, Klaus Iohannis, described as “a friend”, decided to enter the competition.

Julianne Smith also stated that the US also has “the greatest respect” for Klaus Iohannis.

“I think you are aware that the US position is that we fully support Mark Rutte as the next Secretary General, but we also have the greatest respect for our friend, President Iohannis, and we appreciate that he entered the competition and we wish him all the best good, while we continue to debate this issue (the election of the future secretary general – no) within the Alliance”, said Julianne Smith, according to Digi 24.

At the moment, ambassadors from the 32 NATO member countries are debating the pros and cons of who should be the Alliance’s next secretary general.

“We, all 32 ambassadors here, from NATO, are in the midst of searching for potential successors (for the current Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg – no). And there are two official candidates, as you know. We have Mark Rutte from the Netherlands and President Iohannis from Romania. There is an ongoing debate within the Alliance regarding the qualifications of these two very impressive leaders and we will continue to debate the pros and cons of these two individuals until we reach a consensus on one of them,” the ambassador said.

It also says it hopes to reach an agreement in the coming weeks.

“Certainly, we want to reach a decision in this regard as soon as possible. I think at the latest we would like to have this resolved by the summit in Washington,” said Julianne Smith.