Åslaug Haga

Åslaug Marie Haga (born 21 October 1959) is a Norwegian politician and the incoming Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust. She was the leader of the Centre Party from 2003 to 2008.

Early life and career

Haga was born in Nes, Akershus. She has a master's degree in political science from the University of Oslo. She later joined the diplomatic corps, serving at the Norwegian delegation to the United Nations in New York in the late 1980s and at the Norwegian embassy in New Delhi in India in the early 1990s.

Political career

She served as Minister of Culture from 1999 to 2000. In 2001, she was elected to the Storting from Akershus county, and she was reelected in 2005. In 2003, while the Centre Party was an opposition party, she became party leader. As leader of the Centre Party, Haga was instrumental in swinging the party's political course to the left, bringing it into a coalition with the Labour Party and the Socialist Left Party for the first time.

Following the success of this Red-Green Coalition in the 2005 parliamentary elections, the Centre Party entered the government, and Haga succeeded Erna Solberg as Minister for Local Municipalities and Regional Development in the second cabinet Stoltenberg. In September 2007, she became Minister of Petroleum and Energy, succeeding Odd Roger Enoksen, and leaving the regional department to Magnhild Meltveit Kleppa. On 11 April 2008, Haga announced that she would not be seeking re-election to Parliament at the 2009 election, and that she would step down as Centre Party leader before the election.