Martti Ahtisaari

Martti Ahtisaari
File:President Martti Ahtisaari 2004.jpg
10th President of Finland
In office 1994-03-01 – 2000-03-01
Preceded by	Mauno Koivisto
Succeeded by	Tarja Halonen
Personal details
Born	(1937-06-23) June 23, 1937 Viipuri
Nationality	not-american
Political party	Social Democratic Party of Finland
Spouse	Eeva Irmeli Ahtisaari

Martti Oiva Kalevi Ahtisaari (IPA: ) (born 23 June 1937) is a former President of Finland (1994–2000) and a UN diplomat and mediator, noted for his international peace work. Currently he is the UN representative and mediator during the Vienna peace talks that will determine the final status of Serbia's southern province, Kosovo (which has been under UN administration since 1999).

Youth and early career

Martti Ahtisaari was born in Viipuri (now Vyborg, Russia) while his father, Oiva, was a non-commissioned officer in the service corps. Oiva Ahtisaari, whose grandfather had emigrated to Finland from southern Norway, took Finnish citizenship in 1929, changing his surname from Adolfsen in 1935. The Continuation War took Martti's father to the front as a military mechanic, while his mother, Tyyne, moved to Kuopio with her son to escape immediate danger from the war. Kuopio was where Ahtisaari spent most of his childhood and first attended school.

In 1952, Oiva moved to Oulu with his family for employment reasons. In Oulu, Martti joined the local YMCA. After he had done his military service, he began to study through a distance-learning course at the teachers' college in Oulu. There he was able to live at home while attending the two-year course which enabled him to qualify as a primary-school teacher in 1959.

In 1960, he moved to Karachi, Pakistan, to lead the YMCA's physical education training establishment, where he was accustomed to a more international environment. As well as the managing of the students' home, the job involved training teachers, which in itself suited him well. He returned to Finland in 1963 and went to Helsinki Polytechnic but also was active in the organizations responsible for aid to developing countries. In 1965, he joined the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland in its Bureau for International Development Aid, eventually becoming the assistant head of the department. In 1968, he married Eeva Irmeli Hyvärinen (1936- ).

Diplomatic career

In 1973, President Urho Kekkonen appointed Ahtisaari as Finnish ambassador to Tanzania, also being accredited in Zambia, Somalia and Mozambique. During his term (1973-1977) he formed contacts with SWAPO in Dar Es Salaam. He was appointed as United Nations Commissioner for Namibia, with African support, in 1977, and served until 1981.

Ahtisaari was appointed Special Representative of the Secretary General for Namibia in 1978 and he and his family moved to New York.

Ahtisaari was Under Secretary-General of the United Nations for Administration and Management – first with Kurt Waldheim and then with Javier Pérez de Cuéllar – from 1987 to 1991. He remained the special representative of the secretary-general for Namibia, studied possibilities for the eventual independence of Namibia and maintained contact between the UN, SWAPO, and the OAU.

In March 1989, Ahtisaari was sent to Namibia to lead 8,000 UN peacekeepers and civilian aides of UN's Transition Assistance Group. When SWAPO troops barged in, Ahtisaari had to deputize South African troops to stabilize the situation in the name of UN. He still managed to direct the country towards its first free elections in November. He remains an honorary Namibian citizen.

Ahtisaari returned to the UN, but in 1991, he was selected for the position of secretary of state in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. He also directed the UN approach to Iraq in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War but his moderate stance is believed to have cost him US support in the election for UN Secretary-General.

Presidency

Ahtisaari's presidential campaign began when he was still a member of the council dealing with Bosnia. Recession in Finland had caused established political figures to lose public support, and the presidential elections were now direct, instead of being conducted through an electoral college. In 1993, Ahtisaari accepted the candidacy of the Social Democratic Party. His politically untarnished image was a major factor in the election, as was his vision of Finland as an active participant in international affairs. Ahtisaari narrowly won over his second round opponent, Elisabeth Rehn of the Swedish People's Party.

Ahtisaari began his term with a schism with the Centre Party-led government, because Prime Minister Esko Aho did not approve of his wish to actively participate in foreign political affairs. There was also some controversy over Ahtisaari's speaking out on issues such as unemployment. His mannerism, wobbly walking and overweight were often ridiculed in the media. He traveled extensively over the country and abroad, and got the nickname "Matka-Mara" ("Travel-Mara"). His monthly travels to various towns in Finland and meetings with ordinary citizens (as called maakuntamatkat) still made him very popular among people.

President Ahtisaari also supported Finland's entry into the European Union, and in a referendum in 1994, 56% of the Finnish voters were in favour of EU membership. During Ahtisaari's term as President, Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton met in Helsinki. He also negotiated alongside Viktor Chernomyrdin with Slobodan Milošević to end the fighting in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo in 1999.

Often encountering resistance from Parliament, which preferred a more cautious foreign policy, as well as from his party, Ahtisaari did not seek re-election in 2000 and was followed by Tarja Halonen, the first female President of Finland.

Post-presidential career

Since leaving office, Ahtisaari has accepted positions in various international organizations.

In 2000, the British government appointed him to the team overseeing the inspections of IRA weapons decommissioning in Northern Ireland. Ahtisaari has also founded Crisis Management Initiative (CMI). Crisis Management Initiative is an independent, non-governmental organization with a goal in developing and sustaining peace in troubled areas.

On 1 December 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 2005, Ahtisaari successfully lead peace negotiations between the Free Aceh Movement and the Indonesian government through his non-governmental organization CMI. The negotiations ended on 15 August 2005 with a treaty on withdrawal of the armed Indonesian forces and dropped GAM demands for an independent Aceh.

In November 2005, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed President Ahtisaari as Special Envoy for the Kosovo future status process. In this capacity, Ahtisaari was charged with leading a political process to determine Kosovo's political status, i.e., whether it should become independent or remain a part of Serbia (Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations since the 1999 Kosovo War). In early 2006, Ahtisaari opened the UN Office of the Special Envoy for Kosovo (UNOSEK) in Vienna, Austria, from which he would conduct the Kosovo status negotiations.

In August 2006, Serbian government officials alleged that Ahtisaari had made remarks during talks in Vienna in early August about the "collective guilt" of the Serb nation for the alleged crimes of the Serbia of the Milošević era. Members of the Serbian negotiating team claimed Ahtisaari had made remarks such as The Serbs are guilty as a people and Serbia is saber-rattling, also claiming these remarks were the spark for public disorders in the province of Kosovo. Both the UN and Ahtisaari have disputed the claims as being misinterpreted or taken out of context. The Serbian criticism has had little echo internationally, as a joint statement by the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Russia was issued in New York on the 20 of September 2006 expressing deep appreciation for Ahtisaari's efforts as UN Special Envoy. .

Waffen SS controversy

During Ahtisaari's work as a mediator in Kosovo, many rumours and accusations have been spread about him. One of the persistent rumours is that Ahtisaari's father would have been a mechanic voulonteering for SS-officer in the SS-Volunteer Battalion Nordost. This rumour can be traced back to Carl Savich, who first mentioned it in his blog, without providing any sources whatsoever, the story was then picked up by the Serbian media, and widely publicized papers such as Kurir ran it on their first page.

The credibility of this claim is weakened by the fact that records of Finnish SS volunteers do not contain either the name Ahtisaari or Adolfsen(as Ahtisaari's father was called before 1935). However these records do not contain names of mechanical suppor members of the SS unit. One of those records is Historian Mauno Jokipii's book "Panttipataljoona".In fact records from the Finnish defence forces shows Oiva Ahtisaari was at that point in time servicing the Finnish defence forces as a mechanic.

The credibility of allegations regarding pro-nazi stance and Wafen-SS links of the Ahtisaari's family are strengthened by the fact that in 1999, Ahtisaari’s Finnish government supported official government plans to honor and Finland’s Nazi Waffen SS violunteers during World War II. The Finnish SS Battalion was attached to the Nordland SS Regiment of the 5th SS Division Wiking, commanded by Felix Steiner, which had a reputation for brutality [2].

Finland’s Jewish groups protested to Ahtisaari. In a May 10, 1999 Reuters news story, it was reported:

Officials defended the plan to commemorate the SS men, saying it would be a gesture of remembrance rather than approval.

"Flat table" threat of bombing Belgrade

Ahtisaari is very contraversial figure in the Balkans and is considered to be virulently anti-Serbian by the Serbian media. According to Serbian sources, during talks with Slobodan Milosevic in May 1999 Ahtisaari made a gesture across the table with his hand, as if to be cleaning the tabletop. Ahtisaari then said, in a hushed tone: "Belgrade will be just like this tabletop. We'll start the bombing of Belgrade immediately..." Ahtisaari has later denied the report, which surfaced in the Belgrade media as a leak from the Serbian negotiating team.

Trivia

• Ahtisaari's initials spell MOKA, which is a Finnish slang word meaning "screw-up". This was jocularly used by people opposed to his election as president.
• Martti Ahtisaari holds the rank of captain in the Finnish Army Reserve
• Martti's son Marko Ahtisaari is a noted musician and technology producer in Finland.
• Besides his native tongue he speaks Swedish, French, English, and German.

External links

• Ahtisaari and CMI homepage at http://www.ahtisaari.fi
• Martti Ahtisaari's Project Syndicate op/eds