OSLO – Nobel Peace Prize winner Martti Ahtisaari has urged US president-elect Barack Obama to delve into solving the Middle East conflict in his first year in office, calling it a knot that could be untied.
The former Finnish president and veteran diplomat yesterday received the 2008 peace prize, announced in October, for decades of international peace-brokering. “Peace is a question of will,” Mr Ahtisaari said upon receiving the prize at Oslo’s city hall.
“All conflicts can be settled, and there are no excuses for allowing them to become eternal.”
He continued: “I hope that the new president of the United States, who will be sworn in next month, will give high priority to the Middle East conflict during his first year in office.”
Mr Ahtisaari said Washington’s partners in the Quartet – the EU, Russia and UN – must also be seriously committed, “so that a solution can be found to the crises stretching from Israel and Palestine to Iraq and Iran”.
“If we want to achieve lasting results, we must look at the whole region,” said Mr Ahtisaari (71), who won the prize for more than three decades of peace mediating in hotspots from Northern Ireland and Namibia to the Balkans and Indonesia. “The tensions and wars in the region have been going on for so long that many have come to believe that the Middle East knot can never be untied.
“I do not share this belief. All crises, including the one in the Middle East, can be resolved.”
Mr Ahtisaari was speaking after receiving a Nobel diploma and medal to applause from about 1,000 guests at a ceremony attended by Norway’s King Harald and Queen Sonja.
The peace prize, which many consider the world’s highest accolade, comes with 10 million Swedish kronor (€947,000).
Mr Ahtisaari said the credibility of the international community was at stake, so it could no longer pretend to do something about conflict in the Middle East. “We must also get results,” he said.
The peace prize was shared in 1994 by Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for the 1993 Oslo peace accords that later collapsed in renewed violence.
A senior Norwegian Nobel official, Geir Lundestad, said in a 2006 interview that anyone who solved the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was sure to win the prize.
Mr Ahtisaari also urged states to honour their commitments to eradicating poverty under UN goals, adding that it was the most effective way to counter terrorism in the long term. – (Reuters)
