Hazir Reka/Reuters
Martti Ahtisaari at news conference in Kosovo in 2006.
Out of 197 people nominated for the annual prize, the committee said, Mr. Ahtisaari had been chosen “for his important efforts in several continents and over three decades to resolve international conflicts.
To outsiders, Mr. Ahtisaari, 71, has often seemed an undemonstrative and aloof figure. But some people who worked with him praised what Gareth Evans, the head of the nongovernmental International Crisis Group in Brussels called “charm and humor†in dealing with his various negotiating partners.
He has played a central role in ending conflicts that took root in the late 20th century and threatened the early 21st century with conflagrations in many places, some of them remote and all of them complex, presenting mediators with tangles of ethnic, religious or racial passions.
Specifically, the committee mentioned his work in ending South African domination of Namibia, the former South-West Africa, from the 1970s to the late 1990s , and peace efforts in the Indonesian province of Aceh, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, Central Asia, the Horn of Africa and, most recently, in Iraq.
- from the New York Times
