<http://www.nytimes.com/> <http://www.nytimes.com/> The New York Times <http://www.nytimes.com/>
_____
October 11, 2008
Former Finnish President Wins Nobel Peace Prize
By WALTER GIBBS and ALAN COWELL
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OSLO — The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded its 2008 peace prize on Friday to
Martti Ahtisaari
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, the former Finnish president who has been associated over decades with peace
efforts and quiet, cautious diplomacy from Asia to Africa and Europe.
Out of 197 people nominated for the annual prize, the committee said, Mr.
Ahtisaari had been chosen “for his important efforts in several continents and
over three decades to resolve international conflicts.”
To outsiders, Mr. Ahtisaari, 71, has often seemed an undemonstrative and aloof
figure. But some people who worked with him praised what Gareth Evans, the head
of the nongovernmental International Crisis Group in Brussels called “charm and
humor” in dealing with his various negotiating partners.
He has played a central role in ending conflicts that took root in the late
20th century and threatened the early 21st century with conflagrations in many
places, some of them remote and all of them complex, presenting mediators with
tangles of ethnic, religious or racial passions.
Specifically, the committee mentioned his work in ending South African
domination of Namibia, the former South-West Africa, from the 1970s to the late
1990s , and peace efforts in the Indonesian province of Aceh, Kosovo, Northern
Ireland, Central Asia, the Horn of Africa and, most recently, in Iraq.
Mr. Ahtisaari has frequently been seen as a contender for the peace prize,
whose recipients last year included former American Vice President Al Gore
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and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations
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body. By choosing Mr. Ahtisaari, the committee seemed to have opted for a
more traditional, peacemaking candidate whose selections was relatively free of
political sensitivities.
In a television interview after the award was announced, Mr. Ahtisaari
indicated that he might slow the pace of his travels, which, he said, had kept
him away from Finland
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for 200 days a year. “I want to spend more time with my wife,” he said.
The committee’s citation said: “Throughout all his adult life, whether as a
senior Finnish public servant and president or in an international capacity,
often connected to the United Nations, Ahtisaari has worked for peace and
reconciliation.”
“Although the parties themselves have the main responsibility for avoiding war
and conflict, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has on several occasions awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize to mediators in international politics,” the citation
said.
“Today Ahtisaari is an outstanding international mediator. Through his untiring
efforts and good results, he has shown what role mediation of various kinds can
play in the resolution of international conflicts.”
In an initial response, Mr. Ahtisaari said he was “very pleased and grateful”
at receiving the prize, which is worth $1.4 million. It will be awarded to him
at a ceremony in Oslo on December 10.
Ole Danbolt Mjoes, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, rejected
reporters’ suggestion that it had shied from giving the prize to a Chinese
dissident out of fear of reprisals from Beijing.
“There’s nothing we do not dare,” he said. There had been wide speculation
before the winner of the prize was announced that it could be awarded to
Chinese human rights activist Hu Jia
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.
Mr. Mjoes said Mr. Ahtisaari’s record was “rather fantastic.”
“He never gives up even when there are setbacks,” he said, adding that he hoped
Mr. Ahtisaari’s example would spur similar mediation in Afghanistan and Sri
Lanka.
Earlier this month, Mr. Ahtisaari received another peace prize from the
Paris-based UNESCO
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and said in a speech at that time: “I am seriously concerned about the large
number of conflicts that the international community has not solved. We should
never accept that some conflicts remain frozen forever.”
In the speech, he ascribed his interest in peace to his own childhood
experiences.
“The origins of my career as a peace mediator can be found from my childhood
years. I was born in the city of Viipuri, then still part of Finland. We lost
Viipuri when the Soviet Union attacked my country. Along with 400,000 fellow
Karelians I became an eternally displaced person in the rest of Finland,” he
said.
“With my mother I moved from one household to another before settling in the
astern part of Finland, in the city of Kuopio. This experience, which millions
of people around the world have gone through, provided me with sensitivity,
which explains my desire to advance peace and thus help others who have gone
through similar experiences as I did,” he said.
Mr. Ahtisaari worked as a primary school teacher before becoming a Finnish
diplomat in 1956. He was ambassador to Tanzania and to the United Nations.
His work at the U.N. drew him into to the peace initiative that resulted in
Namibia’s independence in 1990. He served as the U.N. Commissioner for Namibia
from 1977 to 1981 and was made special representative to Namibia in July 1978.
As the head of his own organization, Crisis Management Initiative, he initiated
unpublicized meetings in Finland between Iraqi Sunni and Shiite Muslims. He
acted as a special envoy to Central Asia in 2003-2004 and the Horn of Africa in
2003-2005.
Part of the style of his diplomacy lies in the longstanding reputation of
Nordic countries such as Finland for a studied neutrality in the disputes of
others, underpinned by sympathy for underdogs.
In Northern Ireland, he and Cyril Ramaphosa, a South African businessman and
former labor union leader, contributed to British and Irish peace efforts by
inspecting Irish Republican Army
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weapons caches. In 2007, he also became a member of a group seeking to help
Northern Ireland’s factions come to terms with their bloodstained history.
He was the special envoy of the United Nations Secretary General in Kosovo from
2005 to early this year.
In August 2005, Mr. Ahtisaari mediated between Aceh rebels and the Indonesian
government to help end three decades of conflict. The Nobel announcement
sparked an enthusiastic response from some of his erstwhile negotiating
partners.
“This is wonderful news. He succeeded in bringing an end to 30 years of
violence and conflict here in Aceh,” said Muhammad Nazar, the acting governor
of Aceh and a former rebel leader. “He successfully mediated a peace agreement.
He has helped give new life and new hope to the people of Aceh.”
Walter Gibbs reported from Oslo and Alan Cowell from Paris. Peter Gelling
contributed from Banda Aceh, Indonesia.
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