Former Finnish President Wins Nobel Peace Prize

I opted to post an article by ---- Sarah Lyall/London
I'll give it a little art work however. Enjoy this picture of Mr. Ahtisaari on his bicylcle.




Dadang Tri/Reuters

By SARAH LYALL
Published: October 10, 2008
LONDON — Former President Martti Ahtisaari of Finland, who has worked to end conflicts in troubled spots around the world for more than three decades, won the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

Hazir Reka/Reuters
No pic, yet....Martti Ahtisaari at a news conference in Kosovo in 2006.
In its announcement, the Norwegian Nobel Committee called Mr. Ahtisaari “an outstanding international mediator” whose efforts “have contributed to a more peaceful world and to ‘fraternity between nations’ in Alfred Nobel’s spirit.”

Mr. Ahtisaari’s work — as a Finnish diplomat, a United Nations envoy and the representative of various negotiating groups — has taken him to Namibia, Kosovo, Indonesia and Northern Ireland, among other places. He has led humanitarian missions, presided over contentious talks between sworn enemies and helped resolve disputes involving delicate matters of ethnicity, religion and race.

Mr. Ahtisaari has said that the highlight of his career may well be his work over 13 years in helping Namibia make the transition to independence after years of violent conflict with South Africa.

But he has done much more. His work in the former Yugoslavia during the war of the late 1990s, and then in 2005-07, helped work toward a solution of the question of Kosovo’s future. As the head of his own organization, Crisis Management Initiative, he organized unpublicized meetings earlier this year in Finland between Iraqi Sunni and Shiite Muslims. His work in 2005 set the stage for a peace agreement between separatists in Aceh Province and the Indonesian government, after years of bitterness and fighting.

“This is wonderful news,” Muhammad Nazar, a former rebel leader who is now the acting governor of Aceh, said in a statement. He credited Mr. Ahtisaari with “bringing an end to 30 years of violence and conflict.”

To outsiders, Mr. Ahtisaari, 71, a portly man who is stiff with rheumatism, can seem undemonstrative and aloof.

But Gareth Evans, president of the International Crisis Group — of which Mr. Ahtisaari was chairman from 2000 to 2004 — called him “a brilliant negotiator and mediator, with a tremendously effective personal style that combines charm and good humor with an iron determination.”

In a book published by the Brookings Institution, Mr. Evans wrote that Mr. Ahtisaari “combines, to great effect, immense personal charm with a tough, no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is approach to conducting negotiations.” The book quotes one of the negotiators in the Aceh conflict as saying: “His method was really extraordinary. He said, ‘Do you want to win, or do you want peace?’ ”

Former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright said in an interview that she could not “think of a prize that is more richly deserved.”

Mr. Ahtisaari’s role in Kosovo, she said, far exceeded his appointment in 2005 to represent the United Nations in “final status” talks to determine the future of what was then a Serbian province. She said he was also deeply involved in the region during the 1996-99 Kosovo War.

“He was part of a whole set of diplomatic maneuvers we had during the war itself, in terms of trying to sort out how to deal with the Russians and a host of issues to do with carrying out the actual ending of the war,” she recalled.

As special envoy of the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, to Kosovo from 2005 to 2007, Mr. Ahtisaari presided over contentious talks. When they bogged down, he devised his own settlement proposal under which Kosovo would have independent status overseen by international institutions.

The proposal was stymied by Russia in the Security Council and ultimately overshadowed by Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence in February. Kosovo has since been recognized as an independent nation by the United States and most European countries, but still not by Russia or Serbia.

Ms. Albright said Mr. Ahtisaari had been instrumental in creating “a glide path” toward a final resolution that underpins Kosovo’s independence.

“When I talked to him just last week, he thought things were moving in the right direction,” she said. “He has done a remarkable job.”

Mr. Ahtisaari, whose name was selected from a list of 197 nominees, told a Finnish television station that he was “very pleased and grateful” at receiving the prize, which is worth $1.4 million and is to be awarded in a ceremony in Oslo on Dec. 10.

“I hope this will bring positive attention to Finland, and that it tells about our society and what is important to us,” he said.

Mr. Ahtisaari was born in Viipuri, Finland, which is now part of Russia, in 1937. Multilingual — he speaks English, French, German and Swedish, as well as Finnish — he worked as a primary school teacher before becoming a diplomat in 1965, focusing on international development and then becoming the Finnish ambassador to Tanzania.

He worked as United Nations commissioner for Namibia from 1977 to 1981 and served on and off in the region through 1991. As the special representative in charge of the United Nations Transition Assistance Group, or Untag, he helped smooth along Namibia’s transition to independence.

For his efforts, Mr. Ahtisaari was named an honorary citizen of Namibia and was honored in South Africa for “his outstanding achievement as a diplomat and commitment to the cause of freedom in Africa and peace in the world.”

Mr. Ahtisaari also served as president of Finland from 1994 to 2000.

Nobel Peace Prizes have been won in recent years by people whose work is less traditionally peacemaking, but can be seen to have broadly contributed to world peace.

Recent prizes have also gone to a Kenyan environmentalist, Wangari Maathai, and to the Bangladeshi “banker to the poor,” Muhammad Yunus.

Stein Toennesson, director of International Peace Research Institute in Oslo, praised the decision to return to a more traditional candidate.

“It’s important to make clear to the world that this prize is a peace prize and not just a prize for doing good,” Mr. Toennesson said. “For several years the committee has widened the prize. They have not always provided a good enough justification for doing it, and they’ve done it too often.”

When he was a child, Mr. Ahtisaari’s home region was swallowed by the Soviet Union, and he and his family had to move from place to place before finally settling in a strange community. He said that experience had given him a lifelong sympathy for the “eternally displaced” and a “desire to advance peace and thus help others who have gone through similar experiences.”

In an interview on Friday that was published on the Nobel Foundation’s Web site, Mr. Ahtisaari said that the international community should not allow conflicts “to become frozen” or intractable.

“Every conflict can be solved,” he said.


Reporting was contributed by Walter Gibbs from Oslo, Alan Cowell from Paris, Johanna Lemola from Helsinki, Finland, and Celia Dugger from Johannesburg.