The President of the fifty-fifth session of the United Nations General Assembly -- the Millennium Assembly -- brings to the office a wealth of political experience, as well as a reputation as a skilled mediator and consensus-builder. Mr. Harri Holkeri was Finland's Prime Minister from 1987 to 1991, heading a coalition government of conservatives and social democrats. The most renowned and prestigious conservative political figure in Finland over the last few decades, he has served his country and the international community in several political and economic posts. From 1995 to 1998, as a member of The International Body -- a group set up by the Governments of the United Kingdom and Ireland overseeing the decommissioning of illegal weapons in Northern Ireland -- Mr. Holkeri was one of the three independent chairmen of the multi-party peace negotiations and contributed to furthering the peace process. Born in 1937 and raised in the small town of Toijala where his father was a police officer, Mr. Holkeri holds a Master of Political Science degree from the University of Helsinki and was a member of the Finnish delegation to the General Assembly from 1963 to 1965. His political philosophy -- "You cannot make easy decisions unless you first commit yourself to hard solutions" -- has guided his entire political life. Horst Rutsch, Inga Eggers and Sven T. Siefken of the UN Chronicle spoke with Mr. Holkeri on 5 July.

I really do hope that the Millennium Summit gives new impetus to the work of the United Nations, especially to the fifty-fifth session of the General Assembly. In light of the Secretary-General's Millennium Report, I had very high expectations of the Summit. And I hope the Millennium Assembly will see to the implementation of the ideas contained in the Summit Declaration.

Of course, I already know there are some problems I have to face. For instance, if we take the budgetary questions, especially the scale of assessments, this is a sensitive issue which nevertheless must be decided before the new year. And then there are big issues like the reform of the Security Council -- these kinds of questions are something the President of the General Assembly must at least keep his eye on. It remains to be seen which are the real problems, but there are many challenges, there are many obstacles; let us try to change the obstacles to advantages for the Organization.

We Finns represent a very transparent and open-minded way of reaching political decisions. I think I can regard myself as a political decision-maker.

Serving as a Chairman here or elsewhere, what is the main challenge in chairing a meeting?

It is not the discussion -- discussion is just a tool. You have to aim; the final goal must be a decision. And your personal view on the subject is not always so important, even though it may be important to you as a person or as an individual. But in order to get a decision, you sometimes have to forget your own ideas, your own views.

When I was involved in Finnish domestic problems, that is what I used to do as well -- bring people together and make them work together instead of fighting against each other. And there are certain rules that are very important in political negotiations. The first rule is to create more trust and confidence between the parties. Normally, in international or national crises, there are always questions of lack of confidence. You have to change the minds of the people in order to get results. This sounds ideal -- and it is -- but you have to make it absolutely clear that without trust, without building and rebuilding the confidence between the parties, you will never succeed.

Confidence-building is one side of the equation, the other is the question of political will.

Exactly, I think the same way. We have the tools, but we have to learn how to use them -- that is my political philosophy. Sometimes it starts with the venue. For instance, I served the British and Irish Governments in the Northern Ireland peace process. I always told the people there, as well as the other Chairmen, that my opinion on "who's wrong or who's right" has nothing to do with the fact that we have to bring together these people who are against each other, to transform antagonism into cooperation -- and to a certain degree we succeeded. At first, in Northern Ireland the opposing parties didn't want to be in the same room with each other, but we finally succeeded in getting them around the same table. They didn't talk to each other; they only talked to the Chairmen, but finally they were speaking to each other. Then after that, they found out that maybe there was something they could accept from the person on the other side of the table. That is where consensus-building begins -- with the idea that you have your own truth, but that the negotiator on the other side of the table has his own truth as well. And without accepting the other person's thinking, you cannot further your own interest. You need the other's help to get results, and this is very much up to you. Of course, the process is not that simple, but this is the way it works. If you come to a negotiation table saying that you have the final truth, that you know nothing but the truth and that is final, if you are not willing to accept anything, you will get nothing.

The conflict in Northern Ireland, in other words, is an illustration of political antagonism in general?

Northern Ireland is a case in itself, but it is not unique. This antagonism between the unionists and the nationalists, or as they call it the Protestants and Catholics, is at least 800 years old. When it started, it was not a question of protestantism or catholicism, because the Catholic church was the only church at that time-it was a nationalist conflict. But in every European nation, including my own, there have been problems in history when the society was too divided. Finland had a civil war less than a 100 years ago, just like in Ireland. If you look at the history of newly independent nations, unfortunately, civil war is almost every time present, even in the United States. It didn't break out immediately, but civil war in this country was something similar to that in my country or in Ireland. If we go back in the history of different nations, you will find that violence and the use of force, and quite often civil wars, are part of their heritage. These are the traditions of mankind. In Finland, we learned quite a lot from our own civil war. The wounds were visible when I was a boy, when we had the reds and the whites, but my generation went into the Second World War and it united the Finnish nation, so now I do not see any more wounds.

Please use this version of the article for printing.

Next Page of this article