Vegard Ellefsen (born 2 November 1950) is a Norwegian diplomat.
He is a cand.polit. by education and started working for the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1981.
After a period as embassy counsellor at the Norwegian NATO delegation in Brussels from 1997 to 2002 he returned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Here he served as senior adviser from 2002, deputy under-secretary of state from 2004 and director of politics from 2008. From 2010 to 2014 he was Norway's Permanent Representative to NATO, before being hired as chief of cabinet for NATO's new secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg. After one year he worked as a special envoy in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Iraq/Syria affairs. He finished his career as Norwegian ambassador to Turkey between 2016 and 2019. [1]
The foreign relations of Norway are based on the country's membership in NATO and within the workings of the United Nations (UN). Additionally, despite not being a member of the European Union (EU), Norway takes a part in the integration of EU through its membership in the European Economic Area. Norway's foreign ministry includes both the minister of foreign affairs and minister of international development.
Jens Stoltenberg is a Norwegian politician who has served as the 13th secretary general of NATO since 2014. A member of the Labour Party, he previously served as the 34th prime minister of Norway from 2000 to 2001 and again from 2005 until 2013.
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