Nevertheless discussions proceeded with UN Commissioner for Namibia N ° 2 Martti Ahtisaari who played a key role in getting the Constitutional Principles agreed in 1982 by the front-line states, SWAPO, and the Western Contact Group.

Following the death of a later UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, on Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988 – on the eve of the signing of the Tripartite Accord at UN headquarters – Ahtisaari was sent to Namibia in April 1989 as the UN Special Representative to head the United Nations Transition Assistance Group ( UNTAG ).

Ahtisaari is board director of the ImagineNations Group.

Often encountering resistance from the Finnish parliament, which preferred a more cautious foreign policy, as well as from within his own party, Ahtisaari did not seek re-election in 2000.

However, Ahtisaari then told the Finnish state broadcaster YLE that " he wished the mission would fall on someone else " which it ultimately did in the person of Lakhdar Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister and longtime U. N. diplomat.

On 24 July 2006, Ahtisaari brought the parties together in Vienna for the first high-level talks on the status outcome itself.

Ahtisaari conducted several weeks of consultations with the parties in Vienna to finalize the Settlement, including a high-level meeting on 10 March 2007 that brought together the Presidents and Prime Ministers of both sides.

On Monday, 16 July 2007, after many weeks of discussions at the Security Council, Russia rejected a fifth draft of a Security Council resolution based on the Ahtisaari proposals.

Ahtisaari ducked a precise answer by stating that he trusted the Lutheran confession even on this issue.

In 2000 – 01, Ahtisaari and Cyril Ramaphosa inspected IRA weapons dumps for the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, as part of the Northern Ireland peace process.

The New York Times suggested that this criticism of Ahtisaari on the part of the Serbs had led to the " bogging down " of the Kosovo status talks.

In August 2012, Ahtisaari opined on the sectarian violence in Syria and was mentioned as a possible replacement as Joint Envoy there to succeed former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Ahtisaari received the prize on December 10, 2008 at Oslo City Hall in Norway.

At the National Assembly's first session on 14 February 2007, politicians voted overwhelmingly to reject the proposal by UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari on the preliminary resolution of the status of Kosovo.

Laureates during his times as chair were Shirin Ebadi ( 2003 ), Wangari Maathai ( 2004 ) the International Atomic Energy Agency and Mohamed ElBaradei ( 2005 ) Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank ( 2006 ), Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( 2007 ), and Martti Ahtisaari ( 2008 ).

In 1998 Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari said that " Finland's official position is that it does not have territorial demands on Russia.

The person most conspicuously not appearing on the list is the international diplomat and former President of Finland Martti Ahtisaari, who has been a perennial favourite in Finland for the Nobel Peace Prize, and was finally awarded it in 2008.

* Presidents Mauno Koivisto and Martti Ahtisaari – appear as an epilogue to every episode, sitting on a park bench.

According to a hearing in September 2000 of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, two CCB operatives ( Kobus le Roux and Ferdinand Barnard ) were tasked not to kill Ahtisaari, but to give him " a good hiding ".

* 7 September 1994: HE Martti Ahtisaari, former President of the Republic of Finland

Ahtisaari brought the parties together for the first direct dialogue in February 2006 to discuss decentralization of local government, an important measure in the protection of Kosovo Serb communities.

In early 2006, Ahtisaari opened the UN Office of the Special Envoy for Kosovo ( UNOSEK ) in Vienna, Austria, from where he conducted the Kosovo status negotiations.

The United Nations-backed talks, led by UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari, began in February 2006.

Contrary to some of his predecessors and his successor as the Finnish President, Ahtisaari ended all of his New

She started her campaign for the presidency at the beginning of 1999 after President Martti Ahtisaari announced that he would not stand for a second term in the office.

UNTAG's Martti Ahtisaari took advice from British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was visiting Southern Africa at the time, and authorized a limited contingent of South African troops to assist the South West African Police in restoring order.

Ahtisaari was a UN Special Envoy at the Kosovo status process negotiations, aimed at resolving a long-running dispute in Kosovo, which declared its independence from Serbia in 2008.

After completing his military service ( Ahtisaari holds the rank of captain in the Finnish Army Reserve ), he began to study through a distance-learning course at Oulu teachers ' college.

Ahtisaari took advice from British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who was visiting the region at the time, and approved the SADF deployment.

In the event, Ahtisaari did not attend the meeting at the Keetmanshoop Hotel, where Le Roux and Barnard lay in wait for him, and thus Ahtisaari escaped injury.

In the event, Ahtisaari did not attend the meeting at the Keetmanshoop Hotel, where Le Roux and Barnard were laying in wait for him, and thus escaped injury.

Ahtisaari later told the press that the meeting resulted in no breakthroughs, but added that the discussion was " frank and candid " and the atmosphere was better than he could have expected.

In November 2008, Serbian media reported Pierre Mirel, director of the EU enlargement commission's western Balkans division as saying: " The EU has accepted that the deployment of EULEX has to be approved by the United Nations Security Council, and that the mission has to be neutral and will not be related to the Ahtisaari plan ," Mirel said, following his meeting with Serbia's vice-president Bozidar Djelic.

It has offices in Berlin, London, Madrid, Paris, Rome, Sofia and Warsaw and a council chaired by Martti Ahtisaari, Joschka Fischer and Mabel van Oranje.

Concluding that there was little hope of the two sides reconciling their positions independently, Ahtisaari said he would submit to the UN Security Council his own proposed status arrangements, including an explicit recommendation for the status outcome itself, by the end of March.

Perhaps because of his reluctance to authorise this SADF deployment, Ahtisaari was alleged to have been targeted by the South African Civil Cooperation Bureau ( CCB ).

During the campaign, there were rumours spread by some political opponents of Ahtisaari that he had a drinking problem or that he had knowingly accepted a double salary from the Finnish Foreign Ministry and from the United Nations while trying to negotiate an end to the Bosnian War.

During the three-week campaign between the two rounds of presidential elections, Ahtisaari was praised by his supporters for being more compassionate towards the many unemployed Finns than Rehn, who as Defence Minister had to officially support the Aho government's strict economic policies.

In January 1998 Ahtisaari was criticized by some NGOs, politicians and notable cultural figures because he awarded medals of honour to the Forest Minister of Indonesia and to the main owner of the Indonesian RGM Company, a parent company of the April Company.

On December 1, 2000, Ahtisaari was awarded the J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding by the Fulbright Association in recognition of his work as peacemaker in some of the world's most troubled areas.

In November 2005, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Ahtisaari as Special Envoy for the Kosovo status process which was to determine whether Kosovo, having been administered by the United Nations since 1999, should become independent or remain a province of Serbia.

Allegations made by Balkan media sources of corruption and improper conduct by Ahtisaari were described by US State Department spokesman Tom Casey as " spurious ", adding that Ahtisaari's plan is the " best solution possible " and has the " full endorsement of the United States ".

In 2008 Ahtisaari was awarded an honorary degree by University College, London.

He was followed by President Martti Ahtisaari, who was also a supporter of EU membership.

Holkeri was awarded the highest Finnish honorary title of Valtioneuvos ( Counselor of State ) in 1998 by the President of Finland Martti Ahtisaari.

In later years of his career, Sorsa went into his Social Democratic Party's primary elections as candidate for president in 1993, but was defeated in a humiliating way by the relatively unknown international civil servant Martti Ahtisaari.

Since the presidency of Martti Ahtisaari, all surviving recipients of the Mannerheim Cross have been invited to the Independence Day Reception, hosted by the president.

* In 1994 the SFP's candidate Elisabeth Rehn was defeated by the Social Democrat candidate Martti Ahtisaari, also with a narrow margin ( 53. 9 % to 46. 1 %).

In the 1994 presidential elections she was narrowly defeated by Martti Ahtisaari.

The UN Secretary-General pressed for the removal of all ex-Koevoet elements from SWAPOL, with Ahtisaari bringing to Pienaar's attention many allegations of misconduct by them.