Ahti-sorry

Finland's former president Ahtisaari has beaten contenders, among whom was former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, for the Nobel Peace Prize.

An Iar-Taoiseach had made the short-list. ‘I feel like Sebastian Barry,’ he said.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee felt that Mr Ahtisaari’s peace credentials were worthier than Mr Ahern’s because he had been longer in the peace game and had covered more ground. The Committee awarded the 71 year old man the $1.4 million prize ‘for his important efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts.’

‘Martti is only man I know who has made peace on three continents’ said former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. ‘He also makes one heck of a potato and white bean ragout.’

Mr Ahtisaari brought some serious peace to Indonesia’s tricky Aceh province in 2005, and until March last year he dialogued with Serbs, Albanians and Kosovars, bringing them to the brink of an agreement on semi-autonomous, ethnically sensitive waste management facilities.

Nobel committee chairman Ole Danbolt Mjoes took the unusual step of doing down Mr Ahern’s pretentions to the prize. ‘In 1989-90 Ahtisaari was helping Namibia become independent. What was Ahern doing then? He was Minister for Labour, playing second fiddle to MacSharry and Reynolds. What was he negotiating? Haughey into power with the PDs. There’s no comparison.’

Mr Ahern has vowed that either he or his daughter Cecilia will one day win a Nobel prize.