My watch list
my.bionity.com  
Login  

Thorvald Stoltenberg



  Thorvald Stoltenberg (born July 8, 1931) is a prominent Norwegian politician. He served as Minister of Defense (1979-81) and Minister of Foreign Affairs (1987-1989 and 1990-1993) in two Labour governments.

From 1989 to 1990 he was appointed Norwegian Ambassador to the UN. In 1990 he became the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and was in 1993 appointed Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for the former Yugoslavia and UN Co-Chairman of the Steering Committee of the International Conference on the former Yugoslavia.

In 2003 he was Chairman of the Board of International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA). Since 1998 he is President of the Norwegian Red Cross. He is also a member of the Trilateral Commission, and holds a seat on their Executive Committee.

His son, Jens Stoltenberg, followed him into politics and is, since October 2005, serving his second term as Prime Minister of Norway.

Youth

In his youth Stoltenberg became heavily involved in the organization of Hungarian refugees fleeing the invading Soviet Army in 1956. In one particular situation, evacuating refugees by boat in the middle of the night, he jumped into the strong currents, risking his own life to save one of the boats. One of the other rescuers, future famous American journalist Barry Farber called this the greatest act of courage he has ever seen in his life. Stoltenberg himself kept the story a secret, until Farber in December 2006 revealed it on the Norwegian talk-show Først & sist.

Preceded by
Knut Frydenlund
Minister of Foreign Affairs
1987–1999
Succeeded by
Kjell Magne Bondevik
Preceded by
Kjell Magne Bondevik
Minister of Foreign Affairs
1990–1993
Succeeded by
Johan Jørgen Holst
Preceded by
Astrid Nøklebye Heiberg
President of the Norwegian Red Cross
1998–Present
Succeeded by
incumbent
 
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Thorvald_Stoltenberg". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.
Your browser is not current. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 does not support some functions on Chemie.DE