Former Norwegian PM named new NATO chief

Former Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg will take the helm at NATO starting in October, taking over from current Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen who will step down after a NATO summit in Wales later this year.

The appointment, announced by the military alliance on Friday, comes at a critical time as the crisis over Ukraine has suddenly made the 28-nation alliance a more relevant security force in Europe.

The past weeks had seen a flurry of diplomacy as member states sought to push their candidates for NATO's top political job.

Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, who replaced Stoltenberg as prime minister last year, said NATO was getting "a strong and unifying secretary general."

"It is a huge and responsible task Stoltenberg has received today," Solberg said in a statement.

A two-time Norwegian prime minister, Stoltenberg became a recognizable face on the international scene with his dignified response to the twin terror attacks that killed 77 people in July 2011.

Stoltenberg's pledge at the memorial service to combat the atrocity with "more democracy, more openness, and more humanity" helped salve the country's wounds. But his coalition suffered a year later when an independent inquest into the bomb and gun attacks by right-wing fanatic Anders Breivik found a litany of failures by police and security services that might have disrupted or even prevented the slaughter.

The son of a former defense and foreign minister, Stoltenberg, 55, negotiated a deal with Russia that ended a four-decade dispute over their Arctic maritime borders and built a personal friendship with then-president Dmitry Medvedev.

He has made it clear that the annexation of Crimea, which has raised the need for NATO to boost its presence on Europe's eastern edge, cannot stand.

"Russia's use of military force to modify its borders is unacceptable," Stoltenberg said. "The conflict in Ukraine must be a political solution... We will not live in a world where the strongest one prevails."

"Russia's move is in breach of international law and it's a type of power policy that belongs in a past era," he said.

Wire services