Gábor Iklódy


2010

  • Last updated 06-May-2013 11:37

Ambassador Gábor Iklódy is NATO’s Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges. He is the Secretary General’s primary advisor on emerging security challenges and their potential implications for the security of the Alliance and a member of the Secretary General’s senior management team.

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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.  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 programmes, in NATO, with Partner nations, and with other international organisations, as appropriate.

Ambassador Gábor Iklódy has a distinguished record of public service.  He 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.

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.  
In between the two (2003-2005) i.e. at the time when Hungary joined the European Union and got integrated into its work, he filled the position of Director General for European Political Cooperation in Budapest.

In 1996 he headed the Foreign Ministry’s Security Policy and Arms Control Department and later, from 1997 through 1999 its NATO and WEU Department.  This latter coordinated work on Hungary’s NATO accession talks and ran, on behalf of the Government, a large public diplomacy campaign that led to a successful referendum on NATO membership in 1997.

From 1990 until the end of 1995, he worked in Vienna at the Hungarian CSCE/OSCE Mission, from 1992 as deputy head.  He was part of the team negotiating and implementing the CFE treaty (was also a CFE inspector) and was responsible during the 1995 Hungarian OSCE Chairmanship for all activities related to the organization’s field missions.

In 1989-90, after having returned from his first posting abroad in Romania (between 1986-89), he worked as private secretary to State Secretary Ferenc Somogyi.

Ambassador Iklódy is married to Ilona Iklódy-Meiszter.  They have two children.