OSLO:
Finland's former president Martti Ahtisaari won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday
for a long career of peace work from Namibia to
Kosovo.
The Norwegian Nobel
Committee chose Ahtisaari to receive the $1.4 million prize from a field of 197
candidates "for his important efforts, on several continents and over more than
three decades, to resolve international
conflicts."
"These efforts have
contributed to a more peaceful world and to 'fraternity between nations' in
Alfred Nobel's spirit," the award committee said in its
citation.
Sweden's Nobel, the
inventor of dynamite, created the prizes in his 1895
will.
Ahtisaari, who was
Finland's president from 1994 to 2000, has had a long diplomatic career and has
been a favorite to win what many consider the world's top accolade for
years.
In 2005, he mediated a
peace treaty between Indonesia and rebels in Aceh province to end 30 years of
fighting. Until March last year he led Serb-Albanian talks on Kosovo as UN
envoy.
"In 1989-90 he played a
significant part in the establishment of Namibia's independence," the committee
said.
"In 2005 he and his
organization Crisis Management Initiative (CMI) were central to the solution of
the complicated Aceh question in
Indonesia."
"In 1999 and again
in 2005-07, he sought under especially difficult circumstances to find a
solution to the conflict in Kosovo," the committee
said.
Ahtisaari, who oversaw
Namibia's transition to independence as a UN official, said he considered the
work for the southern African country as perhaps his most important
contribution.
"Naturally I am
very pleased by the decision," Ahtisaari told Norwegian broadcaster
NRK.
An Indonesian presidential
spokesman said President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was delighted to hear that
Ahtisaari had been awarded the
prize.
"We have known him to be
a man of honor, a man of integrity and a man who not only has full devotion to
the cost of peace but also has the rare talents to help make it to practical
priority on the ground," the spokesman
said.
The prize will be handed
over in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in
1896.