Ahtisaari receives Nobel Peace Prize
Martti Ahtisaari has received the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize for mediating in some of the world’s thorniest conflicts.
The 71-year-old former Finnish president accepted the award from the Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman Ole Danbolt Mjoes at a ceremony in Oslo.
Ahtisaari won the award for his three decades of peace work around the globe including in Namibia, Kosovo and Indonesia. He served as Finland’s president from 1994 until declining re-election in 2000, when he left politics and founded his Crisis Management Initiative, a peace mediation institute.
The Nobel Prizes in medicine, physics, chemistry, economics and literature were to be presented in Stockholm, Sweden, later today.
