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Finland's Ahtisaari wins Nobel Peace Prize

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-10-10 21:53

OSLO - Finland's former president Martti Ahtisaari won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for a long career of peace mediation work including a 2005 accord between Indonesia and rebels in its Aceh province.

Martti Ahtisaari gestures during an interview with Reuters in Vienna in this March 12, 2007 file picture. [Agencies]

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The Norwegian Nobel Committee chose Ahtisaari to receive the $1.4 million prize from a field of 197 candidates "for his important efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts."

Ahtisaari, who was Finland's president from 1994 to 2000, has had a diplomatic career stretching from Africa to the Balkans. He has been a favourite to win for years.

The prize will be handed over in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the death in 1896 of Swedish inventor and philanthropist Alfred Nobel who created the awards.