GENE­VA–The World Trade Or­gan­i­sa­tion has set­tled on Rober­to Azeve­do of Brazil, a well-known diplo­mat and con­sum­mate in­sid­er in Gene­va cir­cles, to serve as its di­rec­tor gen­er­al for the next four years, of­fi­cials said yes­ter­day.

The di­rec­tor­ship is cho­sen by con­sen­sus in a com­plex and se­cre­tive process, and the run­ner-up is ex­pect­ed to con­cede af­ter­ward. Diplo­mats emerged from con­sul­ta­tions yes­ter­day to rush past jour­nal­ists out of the build­ing, bare­ly ac­knowl­edg­ing that Azeve­do had de­feat­ed Mex­i­can for­mer trade min­is­ter Her­minio Blan­co in the fi­nal round.

Two diplo­mats con­firmed Azeve­do's se­lec­tion to jour­nal­ists on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause they were not au­tho­rised to re­veal the win­ner ahead of the for­mal an­nounce­ment, but Azeve­do al­so re-tweet­ed that he has been cho­sen for the job and com­ments from var­i­ous trade cir­cles be­gan trick­ling in.

In Wash­ing­ton, Jack Colvin, a vice pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al For­eign Trade Coun­cil, said Azeve­do's se­lec­tion re­flects "his ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence and deep fa­mil­iar­i­ty with in­ter­na­tion­al trade in­sti­tu­tions and process­es on be­half of Brazil and the fo­cus he has placed on con­sen­sus-build­ing in Gene­va."

AP