Former Finland Prez Ahtisaari wins Nobel Peace Prize

[ISiddiqui]

Former Finnish President Wins Nobel Peace Prize - NYTimes.com

LONDON — Former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, 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.
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, as a United Nations envoy and as the representative of various negotiating groups — has taken him to Namibia, to Kosovo, to Indonesia and to 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 2005-2007, helped work toward a solution to 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 Aceh’s declaration of independence from Indonesia after years of bitterness and fighting.