Canada's Defence Minister Peter MacKay may run for Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) with the support of the United States, a report said in Ottawa on Monday.
MacKay seemed to confirm his desire for the post when he said on Monday that NATO should not restrict its Secretary General to an European but should consider all candidates regardless of their nationality, the Canadian Press reported.
"I don't think that traditions, in the sense that geography should be a restriction on any position in NATO," he said.
"I don't believe that a person's nationality, given the number of NATO countries there, should ever be a bar to ascendancy of any role in NATO."
The Washington Post reported over the weekend that US Vice President Joe Biden would lobby NATO to choose MacKay in exchange for giving France control of two commands currently held by Americans.
The newspaper reported Biden will make the case for MacKay this week when he travels to NATO headquarters in Brussels for a series of meetings.
The military alliance is looking for a replacement for Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, but no European consensus candidate has so far emerged. MacKay's name has been floated in recent weeks as a possible candidate.
In January, Britain's "Economist" magazine mentioned MacKay and John Manley, a former prime minister of Canada, as candidates for the top NATO job.