'Tireless and Self-effacing' Ahtisaari Wins Nobel Prize

Martti Ahtisaari, the former president of Finland, yesterday crowned three decades of painstaking mediation in some of the world's most intractable conflicts on four continents by winning the Nobel peace prize.

The 71-year-old former diplomat and UN mediator was praised by Norway's Nobel committee for promoting "fraternity between nations" and for his tireless and self-effacing efforts.

Ahtisaari's achievements range from helping end apartheid South Africa's control of Namibia and steering the country to independence in 1990, to last February's declaration of independence by the former Yugoslav province of Kosovo, whose peace plan and constitution were drafted by the Finn.

In between, Ahtisaari negotiated a rapprochement between the Indonesian authorities and the breakaway region of Aceh, supervised the decommissioning of arms in Northern Ireland, and quietly brought Shia and Sunni factions from Iraq to Finland to bolster the chances of ending sectarian strife.

"Ahtisaari is an outstanding international mediator," said the Nobel committee citation. "Through his untiring efforts and good results he has shown what role mediation of various kinds can play in the resolution of international conflicts. Throughout all his adult life Ahtisaari has worked for peace and reconciliation."

Ahtisaari's efforts began in his early 20s when he went to Pakistan as a primary school teacher and Christian activist to engage in development work. A long career in Finnish diplomacy and in various UN posts culminated in a six-year term as president of Finland from 1994 during which he worked with Viktor Chernomyrdin, the Russian prime minister, to negotiate an end to the Kosovo war with Slobodan Milosevic in 1999.

Uncomfortable in the public limelight, preferring quiet and painstaking diplomacy, Ahtisaari is a reticent and retiring man with a wry sense of humor and occasionally sharp tongue.

Ahtisaari, a Liberal Social Democrat, told Norwegian television he was "very pleased and grateful" to have won the prize for which he has long been tipped. He said he wanted to cut down on his travels to spend more time with his wife and singled out Namibian independence as his proudest moment.

He devoted years to southern Africa during the apartheid years, serving as Finnish ambassador to Tanzania, during which time he cultivated contacts with the Namibian guerrillas of the South West Africa People's Organization before being made UN commissioner and then special envoy to Namibia.

"Ahtisaari combines, to great effect, immense personal charm with a tough, no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is approach to conducting negotiations," said Gareth Evans, a successor to Ahtisaari as president of the International Crisis Group. "He has had an extraordinary track record of commitment and success."

Ahtisaari is disliked in Serbia as the architect of Kosovo's secession earlier this year and also in Russia, a place he knows intimately as a Finn born in the Karelian town of Vyborg which is now in Russia after being annexed by the then Soviet Union.

He has explained that his experience of being uprooted from his native town as "an eternally displaced person" fired his determination to promote reconciliation and lent him the empathy and insight for the victims of ethnic conflicts.