Former U.S. Citizen Elected President of Estonia, Vows to Promote Estonia in EU, NATO Created: 23.09.2006 17:14 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 18:22 MSK MosNews

Estonian president-elect Toomas Hendrik Ilves, who beat current President Arnold Ruutel in the race for the presidency, has vowed to raise the Baltic state’s international profile in the European Union and NATO, AFP reported Saturday. Ilves entered Estonia’s low-key contest for the largely figurehead presidency as second favourite behind Ruutel.

But the 52-year-old Ilves, who is currently a Social-Democratic member of the European parliament, rapidly won popular support after the parliamentary rounds of the election, held last month. On Saturday he was elected president of this small Baltic state of 1.3 million people, with 174 votes in a 345-member electoral college, beating Ruutel by 12 votes.

 Born in Sweden to emigre parents, who fled the 1940 Soviet occupation of Estonia, Ilves has spent the better part of his life in the United States, Canada, and Germany. He has a degree in psychology, and has worked as head of the Estonian department of Radio Free Europe in Germany. In 1993, two years after Estonia regained independence from Moscow, Ilves gave up his US citizenship and became Tallinn’s ambassador to Washington.

Soon after, he became foreign minister, helping to guide Estonia through tough membership negotiations with the EU and NATO. In 2004, Estonia was accepted into both organizations, creating a new security framework for a country that had been in the Kremlin’s orbit for five decades. Ilves, who is fluent in English, German and Spanish in addition to his native Estonian —- which he speaks with a slight accent —- was elected in a landslide victory to the European parliament in 2004. In the European parliament, he occupies the post of first vice-president of the foreign affairs committee. Ilves has said he will make foreign policy and Estonia’s international representation a key plank of his presidency.

He often points as an example to neighboring Latvia, whose charismatic President Vaira Vike-Freiberga —- also an expatriate who returned from exile in the West when the Baltic states regained independence —- has significantly raised her country’s international profile and made it a bigger player on the world stage than Estonia. The often acerbic and unpredictable Ilves enjoys support among Estonia’s intellectuals. But his critics have said he knows little about the daily problems facing ordinary Estonians, and would be numb to the challenges facing the Soviet-era generations.

In order to shed his city slicker image, Ilves has taken to wearing the folk costume of the southern region of Estonia where he is restoring his family’s farm. Estonia’s president-elect, who will be sworn in on October 9, has a penchant for bowties and can often be seen chewing gum, even during public appearances. “I warmly recommend Nicorette products to anyone who wants to quit smoking,” he has said. Ilves has a three-year-old daughter with his present wife, Evelin, and two other children from a previous marriage, a boy born in 1987 and a girl born in 1992.

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