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 overwhelmingly 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-year terms.
She received 166 votes of the 182 nations eligible to cast secret ballots. In her first reaction, Bokova said she was delighted that her "call for humanism" had been heard.
Last month, she won a hard-fought battle to receive the nomination from UNESCO's Executive Council. She prevailed 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.
UNESCO was founded in 1945 and is best known in the world for its World Heritage List, through which it strives to preserve the world's antiquities and historical sites.
It also initiates educational and training projects in developing countries, works to protect eco-systems and carries out programs in the social and natural sciences.
