EUROPE, LATIN AMERICA AND ASIA VIE TO HEAD UN FOOD AGENCY

Rome, February 1- Austria, Brazil, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq and Spain have each put forward a candidate to head the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FA0), the Rome-based agency said Tuesday.

FAO made the announcement following the January 31 deadline for submissions.

The election of a new FAO director-general will take place in a secret ballot to be held in June during a conference of the organization's 191 member nations.

The new director-general will take over on January 1, 2012 from Jacques Diouf, from Senegal, who has been in office since 1994.

Candidates include former Spanish foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos who served in Spain's Socialist government from 2004 to 2010 and Brazilian economist Jose Graziano, who has been a key figure in his country's widely acclaimed campaign against hunger, 'Fome Zero' (Zero Hunger).

Austria's candidate is former EU agriculture commissioner and conservative politician Franz Fischler while Indroyono Soesilo of Indonesia is a natural resources scientist who has also held a number of government posts.

Iraqi Abdul Latif Jamal Rashid is his country's current minister of water resources while Iran's nominee Mohammad Saeid Noori Naeini is a veteran diplomat.

<