Brussels - German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday urged fellow European Union leaders to rally behind the most "suitable candidates" for the bloc's top posts. "We need suitable candidates and broad consensus," Merkel said as she arrived in Brussels to attend an extraordinary summit aimed at choosing the EU's first-ever full-time president and new foreign policy chief.
Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy has entered the "Mr Europe" race as favourite, with the Belgian media speculating about likely scenarios were he to leave his current job.
Van Rompuy's unofficial candidacy was strengthened Wednesday when Merkel said she planned to strike a deal on names with the EU's other powerbroker, French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Germany and France are both believed to be in favour of a candidate from a smaller member state. And Van Rompuy has won favours in Paris and Berlin by supporting German and French opposition to Turkey becoming an EU member.
While Germany has not yet explicitly backed any candidate, its ambassador to Belgium, Reinhard Bettzuege, was quoted by Belgian paper De Morgen as saying Germany favoured Van Rompuy, a comment that was subsequently denied in Berlin.
The Belgian faces opposition from other major EU players, with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, who was to chair Thursday's dinner-time talks, conceding that no consensus candidate had emerged out of his pre-summit consultations with fellow leaders.
Sweden currently holds the EU's rotating presidency.
Britain is continuing to promote the candidacy of former premier Tony Blair, and the country's media has already mounted a vicious attack on Van Rompuy's allegedly federalist agenda.
Italy has also backed Blair in the past.
Though no formal election is envisaged, the winning candidate will need to secure a qualified majority of at least 255 out of 345 votes available. He or she will also need the support of at least two-thirds of the bloc's 27 member states.
Germany, France, Italy and Britain all have 29 votes each at their disposal, with Poland and Spain commanding a further 27 votes each.
Meanwhile, former Italian premier Massimo D'Alema, a social democrat, was seen as a frontrunner for the other major post being created by the Lisbon Treaty, that of foreign policy chief.
D'Alema enjoys the backing of conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, but is viewed with suspicion by Poland and other Eastern states because of his communist origins.
Martin Schulz, an influential socialist member of the European Parliament from Germany, weighed in the discussion Thursday by complaining that while D'Alema would be "an excellent EU foreign minister, the problem is that he has not been nominated by a socialist government."
At a summit last month, conservative and socialist leaders struck a deal whereby the EU council president should be picked from the political centre-right and the foreign policy chief from the centre-left.
Spain, meanwhile, is also promoting its own candidate for the post, Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos.
However, Moratinos' chances are seen as slim, given that the foreign policy chief would also assume the vice-presidency of the European Commission, which is currently headed by another Iberian, Jose Manuel Barroso of Portugal.
The third post up for grabs at Thursday evening's summit is that of secretary general of the council.
Reinfeldt has warned delegates to brace themselves for possible all-night discussions in Brussels.
