Harri Holkeri, 74; Finnish PM aided in Irish peace talks

August 08, 2011|Associated Press

HELSINKI - Former Finnish prime minister Harri Holkeri, who brokered peace talks in Northern Ireland in the late 1990s and headed the UN administration in Kosovo, died yesterday. He was 74.

Mr. Holkeri, chairman of the conservative National Coalition Party, was prime minister from 1987 to 1991.

He died in a hospital after a long illness, Finnish news agency STT reported. No cause of death was given.

At the end of 1998, Mr. Holkeri was honored by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II as a member of the team, led by former US senator George Mitchell, that brokered Northern Ireland peace talks, which lasted from 1996 to 1998.

In 2000, Mr. Holkeri served as UN General Assembly president. Three years later, he was appointed the UN special representative to the Serbian province of Kosovo, which was then administered by the world body after the end of the 1999 NATO bombing campaign that halted a Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo.

Mr. Holkeri resigned from the UN posting in Kosovo less than a year later because of ill health.

In 2008, he was badly injured when a thief knocked him over in the street while escaping from a store in Helsinki.