French president Nicolas Sarkozy has threatened to boycott the April NATO summit celebrating the 60th anniversary of the organisation, unless he is allowed to choose where he sits at the conference table.
The president appears not to want to follow the established rules whereby seating is arranged by alphabetical order. Instead, he has insisted he should be seated next to NATO secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, according to a report in German Spiegel Online.
Under a compromise deal, Mr Sarkozy would sit on Mr de Hoop Scheffer’s right whenever TV cameras are in the room, while German chancellor Angela Merkel would sit to the left of the NATO chief.
Once the doors are closed to outsiders, however, the 26 leaders would switch chairs and be seated according to alphabetical order.
The secretary of the NATO council would then sit on one side of Mr de Hoop Scheffer, followed by the prime minister of Belgium, while the organisation’s vice secretary-general, followed by US president Barack Obama, would sit on his other side.
France and Germany are co-hosting the April summit in Strasbourg and Kehl, during which Paris is expected to announce its return to NATO’s military structures, after reportedly securing two senior command positions.
