INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP - NEW MEDIA RELEASE
Former Crisis Group Chairman Martti Ahtisaari Wins Nobel Peace Prize
Brussels, 10 October 2008: The International Crisis Group congratulates its
Chairman Emeritus, Martti Ahtisaari, for winning this year's Nobel Peace
Prize. Ahtisaari served as Chairman of the International Crisis Group from
2000 to 2004, has remained associated with Crisis Group since as Chairman
Emeritus, and earlier this year received in New York our Chairman's Award
for his outstanding contribution to conflict prevention and resolution in
Europe, Africa and Asia.
"With this year's award the Nobel has gone back to its peace and security
roots, and no better choice could possibly have been made", says Crisis
Group President Gareth Evans.
"Martti is a brilliant negotiator and mediator, with a tremendously
effective personal style that combines charm and good humour with an iron
determination [see the more detailed comment extracted below]. He has had
an extraordinary track record of commitment and success -- especially in
Namibia, Aceh and Kosovo -- and the recognition of his contribution to
conflict prevention and resolution is both overdue and extraordinarily well
deserved."
Former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari is as good an example as
one can find of someone who has successfully played all these
[negotiating, mediating and facilitating] roles: as UN Special
Representative managing the transition to peace in Namibia in 1989;
special negotiator effectively representing the EU in assisting
Russia's Victor Chernomyrdin and the U.S.'s Strobe Talbott to end the
fighting in Kosovo in 1999; leader-as head of his own NGO, Crisis
Management Initiative-of the peace negotiations between Indonesia and
the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) in 2005; and Special Envoy of the UN
Secretary-General for the Future Status Process for Kosovo since
2005.
Ahtisaari combines, to great effect, immense personal charm with a
tough, no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is approach to conducting
negotiations (and to chairing, as he did for a time, the
International Crisis Group!). The Aceh peace negotiators were in no
doubt that his personal role was indispensable: in the words of
government envoy Farid Husain, "He exuded authority, like a father...
His method was really extraordinary. He said, 'Do you want to win, or
do you want peace,'" and of the GAM representative Munawarliza Zein,
"There was no chit chat, there were brief greetings and then you got
down to work... our respect grew. This man wasn't playing around."
Strobe Talbott describes him in the 1999 Kosovo peace process as
playing "Mr. Hammer to Chernomyrdin's Mr. Anvil, with Milosevic being
what was beaten between the two."
>From Gareth Evans, The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity
Crimes Once and for All (Brookings Institution Press, 2008), pp 108-9
Contacts: Andrew Stroehlein (Brussels) +32 (0) 2 541 1635
Kimberly Abbott (Washington) +1 202 785 1601
To contact Crisis Group media please click here
*Read the full Crisis Group report on our website:
http://www.crisisgroup.org
The International Crisis Group (Crisis Group) is an independent,
non-profit, non-governmental organisation covering some 60 crisis-affected
countries and territories across four continents, working through
field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent and resolve deadly
conflict.
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