**A French air force general has become the first non-American to assume a supreme command post in Nato.**Gen Stephane Abrial, 55, became head of Allied Command Transformation (ACT) at a ceremony aboard a US aircraft carrier moored at Norfolk, Virginia.
France only rejoined Nato’s command structure in April. The late French President Charles de Gaulle had pulled France out in 1966.
Gen Abrial will oversee Nato military reforms at his Norfolk naval base HQ.
He took over from US Marine Corps Gen James Mattis, becoming one of Nato’s two supreme allied commanders.
Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen called Gen Abrial’s appointment “a significant milestone for the Atlantic alliance”.
France is in the Nato force fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan
Q&A: France and Nato
Gen Abrial’s new post was created in 2002. It focuses on the integration and modernisation of Nato forces to meet new challenges such as terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and cyber-warfare, correspondents say.
France is among the top five contributors to Nato operations and currently has some 3,000 troops in Afghanistan, where it has suffered significant losses.
De Gaulle had pulled France out of the Nato command and evicted the alliance’s headquarters from French soil to affirm France’s independence and its rise as a nuclear power in the Cold War world.
But President Nicolas Sarkozy said there was no sense in France - a founder member of Nato - having no say in the organisation’s decisions on military strategy.
Gen Abrial earned his fighter pilot wings in 1976 and became French Air Force chief-of-staff in 2006. He had earlier spent time at the Nato headquarters in Brussels and as a flight commander in Germany.