The long process is required by the rules and the timetable of the World Council of Churches (WCC), but delegates to its current Central Committee meeting said South African Methodist bishop Mvume Dandala would be a strong candidate.

Dandala, 55, is currently general secretary of the Nairobi-based All African Council of Churches, and his term runs out next year. Tall and imposing with a deep voice, he played a prominent role in solving conflicts in apartheid South Africa.

The outgoing chief, 60-year-old Samuel Kobia of Kenya, the first African in the job, told the 148-member Committee on Monday that "for personal reasons" he would not seek a second term when his 5-year appointment runs out in December.

It was an almost unprecedented move in the WCC, which brings together 359 Protestant and Orthodox church bodies with some 560 million believers and won world recognition in the 1980s for its leading role in campaigning against apartheid.

Since its foundation in 1948, the WCC has had only six leaders.

There had been no indication before the policy-setting body opened its session on Wednesday last week that Kobia would not be automatically reappointed. But as it got under way, questions about his performance were publicly voiced.

CONTESTED DOCTORATE

A German Protestant news agency reported that a doctorate he listed in his official biography was issued by a self-styled university that had no right to bestow degrees, and a leading German bishop criticised his management style.

Kobia, a Kenyan Methodist and WCC insider when he took up his post in January 2004, initially defended himself, saying he took the degree course "in good faith" and that he was engaged in reforms on the lines German church leaders had sought.

The German criticism was crucial because Protestant churches there provide around one third of the WCC budget, but their views were known to be shared by other "Northern" church leaders as well as some from the global South.

"It seems clear that Sam realised that he could not go for another term without German support, and that this was the best way out for everyone," said one WCC insider.

At a news conference on Tuesday, WCC Moderator Walter Altmann of Brazil declined to discuss possible reasons for Kobia's decision. "We accepted it with regret ... I will not in any way speculate beyond that," he added.

Altmann said Kobia would remain in his post until the end of this year and an interim general secretary, to be appointed in September, would take over until an 18-member search committee nominated a new candidate in late 2009.

If approved by the Central Committee, that candidate would become general secretary from January 2010. If it were Dandala, one WCC source said, it could help quash suggestions that Kobia had been the victim of anti-African manoeuvres.