Don McKinnon, foreign minister in the conservative National Party government, has been elected to a four-year term in the post.

The current Commonwealth chief, Nigeria's Emeka Anyaoku, completes his term in early 2000.

Mr McKinnon's appointment caps a political career spanning more than two decades.

Former businessman

Before entering politics in 1978, he worked in real estate and as a farm management consultant.

The BBC's Greg Barrow: "Mr McKinnon has worked with on a Commonwealth group monitoring human rights"

His warm manner and careful turn of phrase took him as far as deputy prime minister in the National government, which came to power in 1990.

But Mr McKinnon, 60, had planned to retire from domestic politics after the general election on November 27, regardless of the outcome of his bid for the Commonwealth post.

New Zealand formally declared Mr McKinnon's candidacy in October 1998.

Most previous heads of the London-based Commonwealth secretariat have come from the Caribbean and Africa.

Foreign policy achievements

A former minister for Pacific island affairs, Mr McKinnon successfully brokered a cease-fire and renewed political dialogue in a bloody Pacific island dispute between Bougainvilleans and the Papua New Guinea government.

He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998 for his part in resolving that conflict.

French nuclear tests at Mururoa Atoll rattled Pacific nations

Mr McKinnon played a key role in the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG), set up after the Commonwealth leaders' meeting hosted by New Zealand in 1995, and served as deputy chairman since its inception.

He successfully lobbied for New Zealand's place on the UN Security Council, held from 1993-94, at the height of an expansion in UN peacekeeping activities.

Mr McKinnon also had to deal with his nation's deep mistrust of France following the 1985 bombing of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland, and nuclear testing in the South Pacific.

And he set about re-establishing defence ties with an annoyed White House in the wake of New Zealand's decision to declare itself a nuclear-free zone under former Prime Minister David Lange.

The eldest son of a former New Zealand army chief, Mr McKinnon was born in London and educated in the US and his home country.

One of his brothers was deputy headmaster of the elite English school Eton College.