NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte announced on Tuesday that the former Minister of Defense of North Macedonia, Radmila Sekerinska, assumes the duties of Deputy General Secretary of the Alliance.

Sekerinska was born in Skopje and in 1995 graduated from the city’s University School of Electrical Engineering with a degree in energy engineering.

He later completed postgraduate studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University, USA (master’s degree in 2007).

Sekerinska joined his “Open Society Foundation”. George Soros and in 1996 he was elected to the Municipal Council of Skopje, a position he held until he was elected a member of the national parliament in 1998.

He then became vice president of the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM).

From 1997 to 2002, Sekerinska worked at the School of Electrical Engineering in Skopje, alongside her parliamentary duties. In the Parliament, she was deputy coordinator of the SDSM parliamentary group.

In the parliamentary elections of 2002, Sekerinska was re-elected as a Member of Parliament and soon after she was appointed Deputy Prime Minister of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, responsible for “European integration”.

Sekerinska was his representative Branko Cervenkovski during his successful election campaign for the presidency of the country in March and April 2004.

She then served as caretaker prime minister for three weeks, as Cervenkovski stepped down to become President.

Sekerinska was again appointed caretaker prime minister on 18 November 2004, this time succeeding Hari Kostov, and remained in office until 17 December 2004, when she was succeeded by Vlado Bučkovski.

She is the first female prime minister in her country.

With the assumption of the prime ministership by Zoran ZaevSekerinska was appointed to the post of Minister of Defense on 1 June 2017.

As part of her duties, on May Day 2018 she met at the Pentagon (USA) with the then US Secretary of Defense James Mattis to discuss the defense relations of the two countries.

In addition, they discussed the issue of Macedonia’s then-name, which prevented it from joining NATO, as well as its commitment to spend 2% of its GDP on defense.