Tributes paid to former leader who oversaw his country’s vote to join EU and won Nobel peace prize in 2008.
The Former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, a renowned peace broker, has died aged 86.
The Social Democrat was president of Finland between 1994 and 2000. After a lengthy career that earned him a global reputation as a peace mediator and the Nobel peace prize, he retired from public life in September 2021 owing to dementia.
Finland’s president, Sauli Niinistö, paid tribute to his predecessor, who he said “lived a great, remarkable life”.
“We have received the news of the death of President Martti Ahtisaari with deep sadness,” Niinistö said. “Martti Ahtisaari believed in people, civilisation and goodness, and he lived a great, remarkable life.”
In an apparent reference to the Israel-Hamas war and the invasion of Ukraine, Alexander Stubb, a former Finnish prime minister, wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “The world has lost a truly exceptional person who devoted his life to peace. Martti Ahtisaari strongly believed that peace is a question of will and that all conflicts can be resolved, always seeing opportunities where others saw problems. Perhaps now more than ever, the world needs people like him.”
Born in Vyborg, which was then in Finland but is now in Russia, in 1937, Ahtisaari rose to power at a time when Finland was deep in an economic depression, overseeing the country’s shift towards the west after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In 1994, the first year of his presidency, he oversaw Finland’s referendum to join the European Union.
However, the issue of EU membership was a source of friction between Ahtisaari and Esko Aho, who was then prime minister, amid disagreements over which of them would take part in EU summits.
After his presidency he worked as a peace mediator, including in Indonesia, Kosovo and Northern Ireland. When he was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2008, the committee praised him for promoting “fraternity between nations” and for his tireless, self-effacing style.
Ahtisaari’s achievements ranged from helping end apartheid-era South Africa’s control of Namibia and steering the country to independence in 1990, to a 2008 declaration of independence by the former Yugoslav province of Kosovo, whose peace plan and constitution were drafted by the Finn.
Ahtisaari also negotiated a rapprochement between the Indonesian authorities and the breakaway region of Aceh and supervised the decommissioning of arms in Northern Ireland.
Ahtisaari was an early supporter of Finland and Sweden joining Nato, stating his position in a 2014 interview. Earlier this year, nearly a decade later, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Finland joined the military alliance.
Born into an army family, he originally trained as a public school teacher. He married his wife, Eeva, the former Finnish first lady, and they had a son, Marko, who is a musician.
Source: The Guardian