Former Finnish president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Martti Ahtisaari died Monday at the age of 86 after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, the Finnish presidency announced.
“It is with great sadness that we learned of the death of President Martti Ahtisaari,” current President Sauli Niinisto said in a statement.
President from 1994 to 2000, Ahtisaari mediated a large number of conflicts, from Indonesia to Kosovo and Namibia, winning numerous distinctions up to the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008.
The former UN diplomat led talks between the Indonesian government and the separatists of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), after a thirty-year war that left around 15,000 dead.
Launched in January 2005 in Helsinki, the discussions concluded six months later with a peace agreement in which few observers believed.
Both sides described Ahtisaari as uncompromising during talks, but with a sense of humor and warmth outside of meetings.
“I have a lot of patience. I’m not used to getting angry, but I can be tough,” he later said, adding that he believed the key to his success was his ability to understand people.
The Kosovo issue, however, remains a failure for this tireless peacekeeper who believed he could bring Kosovo’s Serbs and Albanians together and overcome the horrors of the 1998-1999 conflict.
At the end of 2005, he was tasked by the UN Security Council with supervising talks between Serbs and Kosovars on the future status of the province.
In March 2007, he ended the discussions, recommended independence and gave up his apron. The last negotiations, carried out without him, failed, and Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence on February 17, 2008.
Ahtisaari retired from public life in September 2021, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.