Peace Prize for Martti Ahtisaari, a lifelong diplomat

Calling him an "outstanding international mediator," the Norwegian Nobel Committee on Friday awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2008 to former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari for his efforts to resolve international conflicts across the globe, including Northern Ireland, Namibia, Kosovo, Indonesia and Iraq.

His efforts over three decades, including convening secret meetings in Finland this year between warring Sunni and Shiite groups from Iraq, "have contributed to a more peaceful world and to 'fraternity between nations' in Alfred Nobel's spirit," the committee statement read in announcing the award.

A lifelong diplomat who heads the nongovernmental Crisis Management Initiative, Ahtisaari is known as a quiet, self-effacing negotiator willing to step out of the way until needed and then to take a firm hand and, at times, risks to broker peace.

Ahtisaari, 71, shepherded Namibia through a decade of negotiations between guerrillas and the South African government, resulting in Namibian independence in 1990.

Ahtisaari is one of the main architects of Kosovo independence. He was chairman of the Bosnia-Herzegovina working group in the international peace conference on former Yugoslavia from 1992-93 and was special adviser to the U.N. secretary-general on Yugoslavia in 1993. During NATO's 1999 bombing of Belgrade to force Serbia's withdrawal from Kosovo, Ahtisaari and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin were known to the Americans as "the hammer and the anvil," according to Strobe Talbott, then U.S. deputy secretary of state.

"Martti was the hammer to get [Serbian leader Slobodan] Milosevic to accept NATO's terms. He had credibility because he was a Finn and because he knew the Russians well and they respected him. And thanks to him, the Kosovo war ended in the nick of time because after 78 days of bombing, the allies were going wobbly," Talbott said.

In 2000, Ahtisaari and South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa oversaw the secretive and highly sensitive inspection of the Irish Republican Army's weapons dumps, part of the Northern Ireland peace process between Protestants who support continued unity with Britain and Catholic nationalists who seek unity with Ireland.

He oversaw the 2005 peacemaking between the government of Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement rebels after 30 years of conflict that left 15,000 dead. Ahtisaari said he would use the prize money of about $1.4 million to continue funding his Crisis Management Initiative.

Ahtisaari has the peacemaker's advantage of coming from the neutral country of Finland. He was born in Karelia, which he left at age 2 during a 1939 Soviet invasion, an experience he has described as having given him a sensitivity to the plight of refugees caught up in wars.