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Finland's Martti Ahtisaari Awarded Nobel Peace Prize (Update3) By Meera Bhatia and Vibeke Laroi Enlarge Image/Details Oct. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Martti Ahtisaari, the former president of Finland, won this year's Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to resolve international conflicts. He is the first Finn to win the prize. Ahtisaari, 71, was awarded the prize for ``his important efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades,'' the Oslo-based committee said today. Ahtisaari played a ``significant part'' in bringing independence to Namibia in 1989-90, was central to resolving the ``complicated'' situation in Indonesia's Aceh province in 2005, and helped solve the conflict in Kosovo in 1999 and again in 2005 to 2007, according to the Nobel committee statement. ``I'm very satisfied and thankful for the decision they made,'' Ahtisaari said in a phone interview with Norwegian broadcaster NRK. ``Namibia was absolutely the most important because it took such a long time. But Aceh and Kosovo were also both important.'' He founded Crisis Management Initiative, a non-profit peace brokering organization, in 2000 after a six-year term as president of Finland. Ahtisaari's work included chairing an independent panel on the security and safety of United Nations personnel in Iraq. ``Throughout his entire adult life, Ahtisaari has worked endlessly to solve several long-lasting conflicts,'' said Ole Danbolt Mjoes, chairman of the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee. ``He's an outstanding international mediator. His efforts and achievements have demonstrated the important role of mediation in solving international conflicts.'' Unesco Prize Ahtisaari, who is married with a son, is active in several non-governmental and non-profit organizations. In Finland, he serves on the corporate governing board of Elcoteq SE, Europe's biggest contract manufacturer of electronics. He brokered the peace process between Indonesia's government and the so-called Free Aceh Movement in 2005, which led to the signing of a peace agreement, ending three decades of conflict in the Aceh province. Ahtisaari has been awarded honorary doctorates by 19 universities around the world and received UNESCO's peace prize earlier this month. ``With this prize, the committee shows it is keen to demonstrate that the Nobel peace prize is a peace prize and that it will continue to be given to people working directly with peace issues and not just to people working with other areas under the so-called wide notion of peace,'' Stein Toennesson, director of the International Peace Research Institute, said in a phone interview from Oslo. Prize's Broader Coverage ``But I also think the committee will once in a while give the prize to people working in the other areas,'' Toennesson added. ``It's just been happening a little bit too frequently in the last few years.'' The peace prize, worth 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) was created in the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel more than a century ago. Past laureates include Desmond Tutu, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Mother Theresa and the Red Cross. The prize was first handed out in 1901. Ahtisaari won the award in ``recognition of his long career and extensive work to safeguard peace in the world,'' Finland's Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said in an e-mailed statement today. ``This recognition will also bring credit to Finland.'' Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and a UN panel on the environment won last year's peace prize for raising awareness about the threat of climate change. This year, 33 organizations and 164 individuals had been nominated, one of the largest groups in the prize's history, according to Geir Lundestad, director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute. Living laureates, governments and university chancellors, among others, are allowed to propose candidates. The award is formally handed out at a ceremony in Oslo on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896. Nobel also set up prizes for achievements in physics, medicine, chemistry and literature, which were announced earlier this week by the Stockholm-based Nobel Foundation. The recipient of the economics award, established in memory of Nobel by Sweden's central bank in 1969, will be made public on Oct. 13. To contact the reporter on this story: Meera Bhatia in Oslo at [Е-ПОШТА ЗАШТИЋЕНА]; Vibeke Laroi in Oslo at o [Е-ПОШТА ЗАШТИЋЕНА] Last Updated: October 10, 2008 06:35 EDT
