Keijo Korhonen

Keijo Tero Korhonen (born 23 February 1934 in Paltamo)^[1] is a Finnish politician, ambassador and professor. He was the Finnish foreign minister between 1976 and 1977 representing Centre Party.^[2] During the period 1983-88, he was the Permanent Representative of Finland to the United Nations.^[3] Korhonen was an independent candidate for the presidential election in 1994. He challenged Paavo Väyrynen who was the candidate of central party in Finland. They were both members of the party, but majority of the party has changed toward EU-membership after the party leader Esko Aho took the power and supported EU-membership. Korhonen decided to work against EU-membership and for that reason decided to participated to presidential election outside his own party which supported EU-membership. He has also worked as a professor in political history in the University of Helsinki and an adjunct professor in political science at the University of Arizona.

Korhonen in known of his critical views against the European Union. He is an author of several books considering the foreign politics and the United Nations. Furthermore, Korhonen writes columns for Finnish newspapers and magazines.

According to the former secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee Geir Lundestad's memoir, former Foreign Minister and UN ambassador professor Korhonen, was strongly opposed to the committee awarding the Nobel Peace Prize 2008 to Martti Ahtisaari. Korhonen wrote a letter to the committee which criticised Ahtisaari both personally and for his merits in international conflict zones.^[4] Korhonen himself has denied writing any letter to the Nobel Committee.^[5]

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