Kalla to deliver speech at UNESCO awarding night

The Jakarta Post | Tue, 09/30/2008 5:57 PM | National

Vice President Jusuf Kalla will flyi to France Wednesday night, where he is scheduled to deliver a speech as a guest of honor in the awarding night of former Finland President Martti Ahtisaari.

Ahtisaari will receive the Felix Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize from UNESCO for lifetime contribution to world peace, particularly his role in brokering a peace deal between the Indonesian government with Free Aceh Movement (GAM).

Kalla is invited as an honorary guest in the awarding night for being one of the key persons involved in a seven-week negotiation with GAM leaders in Helsinki, which led to the peace signing agreement on Aug. 15, 2005.

Ahtisaari is President of Finland from 1994 to 2000 and founder of the non-governmental organization Crisis Management Initiative.

Besides facilitating the peace process with GAM, he also carried out numerous peace missions for the United Nations, notably in Namibia and in the Balkans.

As part of his work for Crisis Management Initiative, he organized negotiations in September 2007 in Helsinki between Iraqi Sunni and Shiite Muslim groups to help re-establish dialogue between the two communities.

In 2000, Ahtisaari supervised the disarmament of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Northern Ireland at the request of the British government.

Previous laureates of the Prize include Nelson Mandela and Frederik W. De Klerk; Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat; King Juan Carlos of Spain and former US President Jimmy Carter; and Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade. (and)

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