As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, the former Norwegian Prime Minister will leave his position in the Defense Alliance next autumn after serving a period of eight years and become the governor of the Norwegian Central Bank, and it is speculated that he will be succeeded by a woman from an Eastern European country.
Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic didn’t want to comment on a possible new position in NATO
In an interview with Dagens Nyheter, Index reports, former President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic didn’t want to comment on any of the circulating media speculations that she could become NATO Secretary General, the competition for which includes former British Prime Minister Theresa May, Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid and former Italian Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini, but she did make sure to point out that she enjoyed working as Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy from 2011 to 2014.
“Most of the employees there weren’t used to having a woman as an associate, but they didn’t treat me differently because of my gender. Congratulations to those generals and others who worked hard and didn’t protest when we worked hard to empower women,” the former Croatian president told a Swedish daily.
Former NATO Secretary General and former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, to whom Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic was an assistant in NATO until the end of his term back in 2014, commented on the upcoming election of a leading civilian official in the defense alliance:
“I think it would be good to choose a strong secretary general with good connections. What’s happening in the world now means that NATO will play an even bigger role in the coming years. Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic is one of the possible candidates, but there are other rumours. I can’t say anything more about it at the moment.”
They described her as a conservative Croat
Two Dagens Nyhetera journalists interviewed Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic back on March the 8th after her lecture was held at the Stockholm Business School, a prestigious economic higher education institution, at which Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson completed her education.
Apart from speculating on whether “a conservative Croat would step up to the position in the footsteps of a social-democratic, peaceful and wealthy Norwegian”, and stories about growing up in Yugoslavia, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic’s remarks about Russian President Vladimir Putin were particularly interesting given current times.
The former Croatian president immediately emphasised that she had been pointing out Russia’s aggression against Ukraine for a long time and had previously warned of the possibility of a global crisis: “Unfortunately, this is exactly what happened. I think there was a certain naivety in people’s thinking. What Putin wanted was quite clear in his 2000 political manifesto, which mentioned the restoration of Russia’s economic power and position in the world. The events in Georgia and Crimea later made it known what would happen.”
However, unlike many international leaders who have described Vladimir Putin as a war criminal and lunatic because of his ongoing invasion of Ukraine; US President Joe Biden wondered if his Russian counterpart even had a soul; Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic chose her words carefully in response, Dagens Nyheter points out.
“He was normal and respectful”
“During my meetings with him, he was normal and respectful. We discussed bilateral issues, but also the regional situation across Southeastern Europe. We talked, among other things, about Agrokor, a company that was majority owned by Russian banks and was threatened with collapse and the creation of a crisis in Croatia. In that, but also in some other regional issues, Putin was constructive and provided a solution.
But there were areas in which we didn’t agree, and on a very deep level, and that included, of course, NATO enlargement,” said Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, adding that during numerous meetings with Putin, they’d talk for hours about various topics, including sport.
However, Dagens Nyheter didn’t fail to mention that Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, while she was the Croatian president, during her visit to Moscow in 2018 during the World Cup, handed Putin a jersey of the Croatian national team with his name on it. The photos show them both smiling with the red and white jersey in between them, writes the Swedish daily, and reports Index.
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