ZURICH Adolf Ogi, Switzerland's Defense and Sports Minister who also holds the country's rotating presidency, said on Wednesday he was leaving the government at the end of the year.
Ogi, 58, of the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP), told a televised news conference that he had decided during the summer break to resign the cabinet seat he has held since 1988 in Switzerland's four-party governing executive.
"I want to have more time for my family. My wife, my children and my mother," he said.
His widely anticipated move will not affect the executive's political make-up, although it could spark a redistribution of portfolios among the remaining six ministers.
The current presidency, Ogi's second one-year term in the past 13 years, ends on December 31. Ministers in the Federal Council take it in turns to hold the largely ceremonial year-long post.
In 2001, Telecommunications and Transport Minister Moritz Leuenberger will do the job.
Ogi will still be in office on November 3 when he will take Prince Charles to his small native town of Kandersteg in the Bernese Oberland, the latest in a line of dignitaries including the late French president Francois Mitterrand and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan to visit the town.
The SVP will nominate candidates to join the government who will have to be accepted in a vote by the two Houses of Parliament.
The chairman of the SVP said he could think of at least 12 candidates including local politicians Elisabeth Zoelch, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, Rita Fuhrer or Hans Lauri, or parliamentarians such as Christoffel Braendli, Samuel Schmid, or Christoph Blocher, a maverick billionaire.
Ogi declined to answer questions about what he was going to do next, but Swiss media speculate that the committed internationalist will seek a career either in the International Olympic Committee or with the United Nations.
He is a mountaineering partner of Annan, who sent a message saying his "friend" was "a man with an exceptional capacity for human contacts".
Ogi was the only Federal Council representative from the populist SVP, which made gains to win about a quarter of the vote in parliamentary elections last year.
The Socialist Party (SP), center-right Christian Democrats (CVP) and liberals (FDP) have two seats each.
Ogi was increasingly at loggerheads with the grass roots of the SVP, which has taken an increasingly anti-immigrant stance.
In government, he backed closer ties with the European Union and even future membership, while his party is against closer economic and political ties with the EU.
As defense minister he favored an increasing role for armed Swiss soldiers in peace missions while his party opposed these missions and Swiss entry to the United Nations.
(Reuter)