SPEECH BY PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC MARTTI AHTISAARI
TO THE HEADS OF THE DIPLOMATIC MISSIONS ACCREDITED TO FINLAND
AT THE PRESIDENTIAL PALACE IN HELSINKI ON 21.4.1999

My wife and I are delighted to welcome you this evening and are especially pleased that so many of you have been able to accept our invitation. We have lived through a really Arctic winter. It reminded us of how stern nature can be and of the Nordic reality in which we live.

I thank you, Ambassador Ettmayer, for your service as the Dean of the Diplomatic Corps, in addition to your valuable work in promoting the interests of your native Austria here in Finland. Your contribution has been important at a time when we have been strengthening cooperation between our countries in European Union matters.

At the beginning of this decade, a mood of optimism held sway in Europe. The end of the Cold War was seen as an opportunity to dismantle the barriers between East and West. The common values adopted at the European Security and Cooperation Conference in Paris were designed to act as a foundation for relations between the countries of Europe and their internal policies. Considerable steps forward in relations between states have indeed been achieved on that basis, but the armed hostilities that have erupted time and time again in the former Yugoslavia have cast gloom on these optimistic vistas.

As much as I would like to devote this speech to nothing but peace and positive things, I cannot avoid the subject of the ongoing open conflict in Yugoslavia.

The importance of the principles adopted by the UN and the OSCE is brought home to us once again when we witness the human distress and suffering which violations of these principles have caused in Kosovo. Only a return to observing agreements and common values will provide an opportunity to achieve a lasting peace and begin reconstruction. Finland, too, is working to bring about an end to the warfare and ensure that the whole of the Balkans resumes participation in European cooperation. At the same time we are doing our bit to alleviate the human distress in the region.

I said at the meeting of European Union leaders in Brussels last week that if a peacekeeping operation begins in Kosovo, Finland will be ready to play a part at very short notice.

Despite the shadow that the events in Yugoslavia have cast over Europe, cooperation and integration are continuing to develop on a broad front in our continent. I am personally confident that a network of growing cooperation will provide a solid foundation for development between and within states both in our own continent and further afield in the world.

In just over two months’ time, Finland will be meeting the world as the holder of the European Union Presidency. Presiding over the entire broad spectrum of the EU’s work will be an enormous challenge for us. That is because several questions with far-reaching consequences will fall due for resolution towards the end of this year. Nor is the work of the EU limited to its own territory or even to Europe. The Union’s many links with the rest of the world account for a considerable part of the work that the country holding the Presidency has to do.

Just over four years since we acceded to membership and on the threshold of our assuming the Presidency, I can say that Finland has found her natural place in the European Union. From the very beginning, we have been participating without any reservations whatsoever in the work of the Union and in developing it.

Our joining the Euro Zone at the beginning of this year demonstrated that the structural transformation of the economy carried through in Finland in the present decade has enabled us to participate in the most central segments of European economic integration.

Its northern members have brought the EU into the Baltic Sea region and made it an immediate neighbour of Russia. This change in the Union’s geography and surroundings has been taken account of in several ways; one was the adoption by the European Council meeting in Vienna last December of the Commission’s interim report on the EU’s Northern Dimension. Development of the practical work that the project requires is continuing on this basis. One milestone in this will be the conference on the Northern Dimension that takes place in Helsinki next November.

The end of the century and millennium vividly brings to mind many historical events, which are mirrored in the present and on the basis of which we assess the way the world is changing. One example of that kind of coincidence that I find very interesting is the 150^th anniversary of our national epic the Kalevala now being celebrated as we prepare to assume the Presidency of the European Union. Between the two is an exciting span of history from Finland’s ancient past to the present day.

The Kalevala is probably not on the everyday reading list of many members of the Diplomatic Corps in Helsinki. Nor does it provide much in the way of direct insight into the thinking behind day-to-day politics in our republic. Nonetheless, I make so bold as to recommend this epic to you. Many of the deep currents in Finnish culture that still have an influence on our high-technology society today can be traced to the mythological world of the Kalevala.

Most of you would have no language problem where the Kalevala is concerned, because it has been translated into forty-six of the world’s tongues. There is also plenty of Kalevala-related information to be found on the Internet.

I hope I have awakened your interest in the Kalevala so that you will be able to find new perspectives from which to view and understand Finland and her people.


I thank the Diplomatic Corps in Helsinki for good cooperation. On my own and my wife’s behalf, I propose a toast in your honour.