An enthusiastic sportsman, the 56-year-old Dane must hit the ground running Monday, under pressure to prove he is neither leading a crusade against Muslims nor turning the world's biggest military club into a global policeman.

He must help rekindle icy ties with Russia, still seething that a Cold War foe is closing in on its borders, and ensure that thousands of NATO troops are eased out of Kosovo without re-igniting the ethnic tinderbox.

"I will need to be well rested as there is an extremely hectic programme starting on August 3," Rasmussen said, in an entry on his Internet Facebook page last month, before heading off to France on holiday.

Yet as he watches over the war-fighting, peace-making and problem-solving, the Muslim world will watch over his shoulder, wary of his refusal to halt publication in Denmark of cartoons satirising Islam's Prophet Mohammed.

Only the intervention of US President Barack Obama at a summit in April overcame Turkish objections to his candidature, as religion forced its way into NATO's calculations in a way rarely seen before.

Indeed Ankara will insist he make good on a pledge to develop a dialogue with the Muslim world during his four-year tenure as NATO's top civilian official.

In a sign of his intentions, Rasmussen -- a liberal who led three consecutive centre-right governments -- has brought in Jesper Vahr, the Danish envoy to Turkey, to run his office and act as special advisor.

More pressing though is Afghanistan, with elections in three weeks which will test NATO's resolve to foster democracy and reconstruction, six years after it took the lead in international military operations there.

The Taliban, backed by Al Qaeda fighters, drug runners and criminal gangs, has called on Afghans to boycott the August 20 presidential and provincial polls, and wage holy war against the roughly 90,000 foreign troops there.

"If we were to walk away, Afghanistan would fall to the Taliban, with devastating effect for the people there -- women in particular," current NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer warned in a major speech before stepping down.

"Pakistan would suffer the consequences, with all that that implies for international security. Central Asia would see extremism spread. Al Qaeda would have a free run again, and their terrorist ambitions are global," he said.

Rasmussen will have longer to supervise the drafting of NATO's mission statement -- the all-encompassing Strategic Concept, which equips the alliance to face security challenges and guides political and military development.

He is due to unveil it at NATO's summit in Portugal next autumn.

The update of the decade-old text will have to take into account threats from cyber attack, climate change and energy security, as well as the evolution in terrorism since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

A deft hand will be required to breathe new life into the NATO-Russia Council, the forum where Moscow and the alliance cooperate and air their many differences, amid deep tensions over the war in Georgia a year ago.

While Scheffer joined a NATO in 2004 riven by the Iraq war, Rasmussen has to handle a similar cleavage over Russia, with France and Germany notably opposed to the US-backed NATO candidacies of former Soviet Georgia and Ukraine.

Despite the formidable challenges, diplomats are optimistic that the first head of government to take the top NATO job will be up to it.

"He has demonstrated his ability to manoeuvre. Seven years as a prime minister isn't too bad," noted one. "He's an astute politician."

earlier related report
NATO's Rasmussen: a staunch US ally and moderniser
Former Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a staunch ally of Washington and a supporter of the war on Iraq, will take up the reins of NATO as secretary general on Monday.

With the announcement of his appointment last April, it was the first time that the military alliance had picked a serving head of government for its top job -- a sign that the post is to become much more politicised.

"First and foremost, I am a political leader. That's what I was as prime minister and that's what I will also be as secretary general. It's the reason why I have been chosen," Rasmussen told the Danish monthly, Berlingske Nyhedsmagasin, at the end of June.

"My colleagues told me they wanted a NATO with a higher political profile with a politician leading it," he told the news magazine, adding he wanted to create a "vision" for the alliance that would help it achieve a set of clear objectives.

Observers say Rasmussen likes to set out a very clear agenda and sees it through until the very end.

"There will be more room for manoeuvre than the majority of my predecessors," he said, citing this new freedom as the reason for accepting the job.

The former Danish premier wants to modernise the organisation and make it "more efficient" and says better coordination between its civilian and military operations is one of his "major objectives."

Rasmussen pointed to Afghanistan as an example where military might "is not the only way to achieve peace."

"We have to accompany it with strengthening reconstruction efforts, finding alternatives to opium farming and helping to build stable democratic institutions," he said.

Rasmussen takes over the reins from Dutchman Jaap de Hoop Scheffer at a crucial time: many NATO members are now questioning why they are in Afghanistan, the alliance's largest individual military operation, after several troops lost their lives in July.

Germany, Britain and France were said to be enthusiastic supporters, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel gushingly describing him as an "excellent choice" who would be a "strong secretary general."

He speaks English and French fluently, and his jovial charisma is known to rapidly dissolve into cool austerity when the situation demands. He is also renowned for an ability to reach political compromise.

Rasmussen has said his greatest achievement as Danish prime minister was agreeing a deal to usher 10 new member states into the European Union during Denmark's 2002 EU presidency, something which allowed him to build up "a strong network of friends" throughout Europe.

The 56-year-old is also a loyal ally of the United States, and did not hesitate to involve Denmark in the US-led coalition against Iraq, with a narrow majority in parliament, even though Danes were largely opposed to the idea.

Rasmussen told the Berlingske Nyhedsmagasin that President Obama had "strongly applied himself so that I would be secretary general and made an extra effort to secure my nomination" -- a veiled reference to Turkish threats to block his bid for the job over the controversy surrounding the publication of Mohammed cartoons by a Danish newspaper in 2005.

After nearly eight years at the helm of Denmark's centre-right coalition government, he is considered "a good organiser and a skilled tactician with enormous self-control," according to political analyst Hans Engell.

An economist by training, Rasmussen entered parliament in 1978, climbing the party ranks to serve as deputy Liberal party leader for 13 years before taking over in 1998.

Rasmussen is married with two daughters and a son and recently became a grandfather. He works hard to stay in shape, skiing, kayaking and running.

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