NATO Selects New Chief

Obama Again Invokes Personal Diplomacy to Avert NATO Stalemate Bloomberg — President Barack Obama waded into a diplomatic stalemate for the second time on his European trip and once again succeeded in bringing his more senior peers into harmony. With a North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit facing potential deadlock yesterday over Turkey’s opposition to Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as the next head of NATO, Obama brought Rasmussen and Turkish President Abdullah Gul together for a talk. click to read complete article

WHITE HOUSE NOTEBOOK: Europe wheels and deals, too AP — Wheeling and dealing in politics is universal. That's one of the lessons President Barack Obama says he took away from his first NATO summit. He has said throughout his tour of European countries that he had come "to listen, to learn." So an Austrian television reporter took him up on it. click to read complete article

New NATO chief a hard sell in Muslim world Daily Times — Rasmussen was a staunch Bush ally, supported Iraq invasion and earned international Muslim condemnation for his support of blasphemous cartoons published by a Danish newspaper in 2005 ANDERS Fogh Rasmussen is a poster boy in Western capitals but it remains to be seen how the smooth-talking Dane’s nomination Saturday as NATO secretary general will go down in the Muslim world. click to read complete article