Martti Ahtisaari - Former Finnish President Wins Nobel Peace Prize!
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October 10th, 2008
Martti Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president and United Nations envoy, has been awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for his work as a mediator in international conflicts.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said it had chosen Mr Ahtisaari, 71, for his “important efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts”.
Mr Ahtisaari’s first big success was helping to secure Namibia’s independence from South Africa in 1990 as Special Representative of the UN Secretary General.
At the end of a long and complex negotiating process South Africa was finally persuaded to end its occupation of neighbouring Namibia in return for the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola.
“Namibia was absolutely the most important because it took such a long time,” Mr Ahtisaari told Norwegian broadcaster on Friday.
He also successfully mediated in 2005 to end the three decade-long conflict in Aceh between Indonesia and the free Aceh Movement rebels that had killed 15,000 people.
Most recently, Mr Ahtisaari acted as the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General in Kosovo but his mediation efforts between Serbs and Albanians failed to prevent Kosovo declaring independence unilaterally.
He has also been involved in mediation in Iraq, Northern Ireland, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa.
“Today Ahtisaari is an outstanding international mediator,” said the Nobel committee.
Mr Ahtisaari, a former secretary of state in the Finnish foreign ministry, is in the proud tradition of Nordic diplomats who have gone on to play important roles at the UN, which he joined in 1977.
His international prominence as a UN diplomat helped him win the first direct election in 1994 to become the Finnish president, who has significant foreign policy powers.
Under his presidency, Finland entered the European Union and adopted the euro. He stepped down in 2000 and founded the Crisis Management Initiative, a peace negotiating organisation.
The annual Nkr10m ($1.4m) Nobel peace prize was established by the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish explosives entrepreneur. This year 33 organisations and 164 individuals were nominated for the prize, which will be formally presented in Oslo on Decmber 10.
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