OSLO, Oct 10: The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, who has spent 30 years helping end conflicts in trouble spots ranging from Kosovo to Namibia and Indonesia.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee hailed the 71-year-old Ahtisaari “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,” committee head Ole Danbolt Mjoes said.

Ahtisaari, a quiet, portly man now afflicted by rheumatism, told Norwegian public broadcaster NRK that his work as the UN special envoy to Namibia had been the highlight of his career.

“Of course Namibia is the most important since it took so long,” he said, adding that he was “very pleased” to win the prestigious prize.

As the UN secretary general’s special envoy, Ahtisaari guided Namibia towards a peaceful independence in 1990 after more than a decade of negotiations.

He also oversaw the 2005 reconciliation between the Indonesian government and Free Aceh Movement (GAM) rebels, ending a three-decade old conflict that killed some 15,000 people.

In Europe, he was deeply involved in Kosovo, even though his mediation efforts failed to clinch an agreement between Serbia and Kosovo. Pristina in February this year unilaterally declared its independence.

And in May 2000 the British government appointed Ahtisaari to co-head, with Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, the inspection of IRA arms’ dumps in Northern Ireland.

“He never gives up. He always tries to find a solution. The world needs more people like him,” Mjoes said.

Although he most recently displayed his talents as a mediator in Europe, Ahtisaari cut his diplomatic teeth in Africa. He was appointed Finland’s ambassador to Tanzania in 1973, at the age of 36.

He became UN Commissioner for Namibia in 1977 and in 1978 was named the UN envoy to Namibia.

In 1994 Finland’s Social Democratic Party nominated him to run for the presidency and Ahtisaari became the first directly elected Finnish president.

Mocked by the Finnish press for his stout figure and his limp, Ahtisaari was ill at ease with the largely ceremonial role of president. With his true passion in foreign affairs, Ahtisaari likened his six-year tour in domestic politics to “an extramarital affair”.

At the end of 2005, Ahtisaari was appointed the UN special envoy for talks on Kosovo, seven years after he played a key role in bringing an end to hostilities in the Serbian province.

He recommended independence for the breakaway Serbian province, where there is an ethnic Albanian majority, but his inability to get the two sides to agree was a blow for him.

The great and the good of world diplomacy saluted Ahtisaari’s conflict resolution efforts and said there could be no worthier recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.—AFP