BERLIN - Former German chancellor Angela Merkel has turned down the offer of a job at the United Nations, her office said on Wednesday, a month after she stepped down as Europe's most powerful politician after 16 years at the helm.
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Merkel, 67, called U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres last week to thank him for the job he had offered her in a letter and to tell him she would not accept it, the office said, without elaborating.
German media reported that Guterres had offered Merkel the chair of a high-level U.N. advisory body on global public goods, one of his flagship reform projects. It will focus on issues including the ozone layer, vaccines and outer space debris.
Merkel, a conservative, has stayed out of the political spotlight since handing over Germany's chancellorship to Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat.
She is working on a political memoir with her long-time aide, according to an interview in Der Spiegel, but little more is known about Merkel's life in retirement.