Kosovo peace broker Martti Ahtisaari due in Sri Lanka

[August 22, 2003 - 9.30 GMT]

Martti Ahtisaari, the former President of Finland will be in Colombo over the weekend at the invitation of President Chandrika Kumaratunga. During his three-day stay in Colombo he is scheduled to meet with political leaders, constitutional and legal experts and members of the civil society.  

Mr. Ahtisaari has earned a worldwide reputation as one of the great peacemakers of the 20th century. He has handled some of the thorniest of international problems. He has spent much of his distinguished career brokering solutions to seemingly hopeless conflicts in Namibia, Kosovo and Northern Ireland. 

Mr. Ahtisaari is considered to have been instrumental in bringing an end to the conflict in Kosovo in June 1999 after he was sent by the European Union as a mediator. Finland though a non-NATO country maintained ties with Moscow when Mr. Ahtisaari was President, qualities that senior European leaders recognized as vital for negotiating with President Slobodan Milosevic. 

In the year 2000 he was a European Union envoy sent to assess Austria's human rights record in the row between Vienna and the EU over the far-right Freedom's Party's entry into a coalition government.  

Born in 1937, Mr. Ahtisaari gained his reputation as an international envoy after a long career in diplomacy with the United Nations. 

In 1993, he was one of a number of European envoys who tried to prevent the former Yugoslavia sliding further into ethnic conflict. Mr. Ahtisaari was elected President of Finland a year later; he was the candidate of the Social Democrats. 

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Last Updated Date: August 22, 2003  -9.30 GMT.