President congratulates Ahtisaari on Nobel

The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Fri, 10/10/2008 6:56 PM | Headlines

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono congratulates former Finland president Martti Ahtisaari for winning this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, spokesperson Dino Patti Djalal said Friday.

”He is a solution oriented person, and he also has played important role in Aceh,” Dino said at the State Palace on Friday after addressing the President with the good news.

Indonesian Foreign Ministry also issued a statement welcoming the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to award Ahtisaari with the peace prize.

“President Ahtisaari has made a constructive contribution to the resolution of many conflicts in the world, including, among others, Namibia, Northern Ireland and in the case of Indonesia, Aceh in 2005,” said the statement sent to The Jakarta Post.

Recently Ahtisaari received the Felix Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize from UNESCO for lifetime contribution to world peace.

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

Besides facilitating a peace process between Indonesian government with the Free Aceh Movement (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. (and)

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