President Ahtisaari Receives Great Negotiator Award (27.9.2010)

Former President of Finland and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Martti Ahtisaari was honored with the Great Negotiator Award by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and the Future of Diplomacy Project on 27 September 2010. The Program on Negotiation (PON) presents the Great Negotiator Award to an individual whose lifetime achievements in the field of negotiation and dispute resolution have had a significant and lasting impact.

According to Professor Robert Mnookin, the Director of the Negotiation Research Project, President Ahtisaari has demonstrated characteristics of a great negotiator. “He is persistent, candid and can combine empathy and assertiveness. We honor his achievements and have a lot to learn about them,” professor Mnoonkin said.

President Ahtisaari was the 9^th person to receive the award.  Other recipients of the Great Nogotiator Award have been: Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the artists who created “The Gates” in Central Park (2008); Bruce Wasserstein, Chairman and CEO of Lazard, an international financial advisory and asset management firm (2007); Sadako Ogata, former United Nations high commissioner for refugees (2005); Richard Holbrooke, former United States ambassador to the United Nations (2004); Stuart Eizenstat, former U.S. ambassador to the European Union (2003); Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations’ special envoy for Afghanistan (2002); Charlene Barshefsky, U.S. trade representative in the second Clinton administration (2001); and former U.S. Senator George Mitchell for his work in Northern Ireland (2000).