France's finance minister, Christine Lagarde, has said she will apply to lead the International Monetary Fund [IMF], after she received wide European backing for the job.
"I have decided to present my candidacy," she said on Wednesday, adding that she had made the decision "after mature reflection."
Lagarde announced her candidacy after securing the unanimous backing of the 27-nation European Union and, diplomats said, support from the United States and China.
"It is an immense challenge which I approach with humility and in the hope of achieving the broadest possible consensus," Lagarde said, adding that she planned to travel extensively in the coming weeks to talk with other member states.
The 55-year-old centre-right politician, a former corporate lawyer, has won praise for her skillful chairing meetings of the G20 finance ministers, and for her communications skills.
However, unlike Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former IMF chief who resigned last week after being charged with the attempted rape of a hotel maid in New York, she is not an economist.
Megan Greene, from the Economist Intelligence Unit in London, told Al Jazeera it looked increasingly likely there would be a European head in the IMF.
"Lagarde isn't the strongest candidate from an economics perspective but she is excellent in terms of politics," she said.
"Being at the head of the IMF during the European debt crisis would be excellent because it is fundamentally a political crisis, as much as it is a debt crisis
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