After a long career as a successful mediator, Martti Ahtisaari finally won the Nobel Peace Prize - for a mission that failed. To be sure, the amiable Finn richly deserved a Lifetime Achievement Oscar for his track record in international diplomacy, very much in the same spirit as the Nobel recognition of Jimmy Carter in 2002. Yesterday's award, however, was seen widely as an attempt by the Nobel Committee to bolster his most recent enterprise: Kosovo's peaceful but controversial transition to independence.

The “Ahtisaari Plan” for Kosovo, which he drafted last year as a UN special envoy, has been roundly rejected by Russia and Serbia. Timing being everything, this year's award comes as the international community tries to manoeuvre Moscow and Belgrade into accepting the inevitability of a free Kosovo.

“Given that Ahtisaari had been in the frame for the prize before, it's a very odd thing that it has happened now,” a European diplomat noted. “It's fair to say the Nobel Committee wanted to boost the stability of the Balkans.”

Just this week, Montenegro and Macedonia brought to 50 the number of states that have recognised the area. On Wednesday, Serbia prodded the UN General Assembly to seek an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the legality of independence for Kosovo - but more countries abstained or voted against than the 77 who supported the move.

In this respect, the 2008 peace prize is similar to the 2007 award to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just before talks on global warming; or the prize to Mohammed El-Baradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2005 as they grappled with Iran's nuclear programme.

The committee made the same gambit in 1988 when it conferred the peace prize on UN peacekeeping forces just as a large force of “blue berets” was preparing to usher Namibia to independence - part of the rapid resurgence of UN peacekeeping at the end of the Cold War.

The Namibia operation turned out to be one of the UN's great successes. Mr Ahtisaari missed out on the peace prize then. But not this time.

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