Luxembourg PM says interested by top EU job: media

(PARIS) - Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker threw his hat into the ring to become the first EU president, in an interview with French daily Le Monde released Tuesday.

"If I were called upon, I would have no reason to refuse to hear, on condition that there are ambitious ideas for the post backing it up," he told the newspaper in an interview.

The remarks by Juncker, the European Union's longest-serving leader, put him alongside former British premier Tony Blair in the running for the new post, which would replace the cumbersome rotating presidency system.

The job does not exist for the moment as the Lisbon Treaty which creates it has yet to be ratified in all 27 EU nations, although the last holdout, the Czech Republic, is expected to do so soon.

Juncker, who is also Luxembourg's finance minister and chairs the 16-nation group using the euro single currency, said he did not oppose Blair personally, but felt that the president should come from a country deeply tied to the EU.

He said that Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands -- the so-called Benelux countries -- "have taken a position, and this goes beyond Tony Blair as a person".

Britain has not signed up to either the euro currency or the passport-free Schengen travel area.

"I'm not playing down areas in which the United Kingdom has been a real inspiration for Europe over the last 10 years," Juncker told the paper.

He said "Europe should be represented by someone whose main concern would be to serve it, to strive for unity around virtuous compromise, and who would not try to represent it abroad without the guarantee of internal cohesion" first.

Blair, who was British prime minister from 1997 to 2007 and sparked division in Europe over his defence of the Iraq war, has not declared his candidacy for the job, with a two and a half year term which can be renewed once.

But British Foreign Secretary David Miliband lobbied Monday for Blair's nomination at a meeting of his European counterparts in Luxembourg, ahead of an EU summit starting Thursday where the post is set to be discussed.

Britain's Guardian newspaper reported Tuesday that Prime Minister Gordon Brown has asked two of his most senior advisers to lobby discreetly in Europe to help secure Blair the EU presidency.