OTTAWA — Defence Minister Peter MacKay says NATO should consider all candidates regardless of their nationality for a job he's rumoured to be in the running for: secretary general of the military alliance.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization should eschew its long-standing tradition of selecting a European secretary general, MacKay said Monday.

"I don't think that traditions, in the sense that geography should be a restriction on any position in NATO," he said.

"I don't believe that a person's nationality, given the number of NATO countries there, should ever be a bar to ascendency of any role in NATO."

The defence minister touted Canada's 60-year history as a member of NATO and specifically mentioned the work of Canada's former chief of defence staff, Ray Henault, who serves as the Canadian chair of NATO's military committee.

The Washington Post reported over the weekend that U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden would lobby NATO to choose MacKay in exchange for giving France control of two commands currently held by Americans.

The Post reported Biden will make the case for MacKay this week when he travels to NATO headquarters in Brussels for a series of meetings.

The military alliance is looking for a replacement for Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, but no European consensus candidate has so far emerged.

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, long considered a possible front-runner for the job, has said he does not aspire to the NATO post.

MacKay's name has been floated in recent weeks as a possible candidate.

In January, Britain's Economist magazine mentioned MacKay and former Liberal deputy prime minister John Manley, who headed a blue ribbon panel of experts that prepared a report on Canada's Afghan mission last year for the Conservative government, as candidates for the top NATO job.

The chief of Canada's army, Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, said he would welcome a Canadian at NATO's helm.

"I'm a proud Canadian. I think Canadians should have top positions just about everywhere they go," he said after testifying at a Senate committee Monday.

However, MacKay's recent tough talk after a Russian bomber approached Canadian airspace on the eve of American President Barack Obama's visit to Ottawa in February could complicate his candidacy.

Russia has a hot and cold relationship with NATO, and the alliance's foreign ministers agreed last week to resume high-level ties with Moscow after suspending them last year when Russia invaded Georgia.

MacKay's comments sparked a war of words when Russia denied the jet was probing North American airspace.

"I'm not going to stand here and accuse the Russians of deliberately doing this during the presidential visit," MacKay said late last month.

"But it was a strong coincidence, which we met with the presence, as we always do, of F-18 fighter planes and world-class pilots that know their business."