Hungarian diplomat begins high-ranking NATO job

NATO’s Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges, Gábor Iklódy is the first Hungarian to work in NATO’s top management. He is the Secretary General’s primary advisor on emerging security challenges and a member of the Secretary General’s senior management team.

If NATO wishes to work as an organization capable of reacting to the real dangers of today’s world, then, it must develop capabilities that serve the protection of computer systems. That is how Gábor Iklódy, a former high-ranking official of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry, justifies the set-up of a new division in NATO’s structure. The Division, which he directs and manages, aims to provide a coordinated approach by the Alliance to the challenges of the 21st century. These include terrorism, weapons of mass destruction proliferation, cyber threats, as well as energy security challenges, including those posed by environmental changes.

As NATO describes it, the Division will play an important role in the implementation of the new Strategic Concept, as well as in the development of a strategic analysis capability to enable the Alliance to better anticipate crisis situations and assess risks. The division also promotes security cooperation through a variety of programs, in NATO, with partner nations, and with other international organizations, as appropriate.

Gábor Iklódy joined the Hungarian Foreign Service in 1983 and has since then built up a long record in security policy and multilateral diplomacy, a large part of which he devoted to Euro-Atlantic integration, including a coordination work in Hungary’s accession talks to NATO. Before taking up his new position at NATO, he worked as Political Director and State Secretary in charge of multilateral issues, a position he was appointed to in 2009, with the main focus being on Hungary’s upcoming EU Presidency in the first half of 2011. In the period between 1999 and 2009 he served two four-year terms in Scandinavia as Ambassador, first in Norway (accredited also in Iceland) and later in Sweden.