Paris - Bulgarian diplomat Irina Bokova was Thursday officially elected the first woman director-general of UNESCO, the Paris-based scientific and cultural organization said late Thursday. The 57-year-old Bokova was confirmed by a vote of the 193-member UNESCO General Assembly, meeting in Paris, to take over the prestigious post from Koichiro Matsuura, 72, who held it for two five-yesr terms.
Last month, she won a hard-fought nomination battle, over five electoral rounds, against eight other candidates, notably controversial Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosny.
Originally regarded as the favourite to win the vote, Hosny was criticized as being anti-Semitic because he had said last year that he would personally burn any Israeli book found in the library at Alexandria.
In addition, in 2001 he had described Israeli culture as "aggressive, racist, pretentious."
At the time, sources at UNESCO said the United States was waging a particularly fierce campaign against Hosny.
A mother of two grown children, Bokova has served as Bulgarian foreign minister and was lately the country's ambassador to France and Monaco. She has been a member of the UNESCO Ececutive Board since 2007.
