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U.S. President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize today for giving the world "hope for a better future" and striving for nuclear disarmament.



http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE5981JK20091009



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091009/ap_on_re_eu/eu_nobel_peace

The Norwegian Nobel committee made its decision only on Monday - unusually close to the announcement date - from a record list of 205 names.

"We reached a decision," the influential secretary of the committee, Geir Lundestad, told AFP.

"We held more meetings than usual because this time there were so many candidates, two of our members are new, and we wanted to make use of all the time we have to make the right choice," he added.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26177822-23109,00.html

Those who support and welcome Obama's award :

The chief Palestinian peace negotiator, Saeb Erekat, welcomed the award to Obama and expressed hope that "he will be able to achieve peace in the Middle East."

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader and a Nobel Prize winner himself, said: "I am happy. What Obama did during his presidency is a big signal, he gave a hope. In these hard times people who are capable of taking responsibility, who have a vision, commitment and political will should be supported."

Mandela Foundation

Opposition : Some Arab and Muslim reaction was fiercely critical.

Mixed reaction : Singapore foreign minister blogged that he was "pleasantly surprised".

Peace

The Nobel committee stuck by the strict interpretation of "peace" in this year's award. Past luminaries who have won the coveted prize include Mother Teresa, Dalai Lama and Martin Luther King Jr. This year, the front runners were not dissidents and human rights activists who qualified if the meaning of "peace" was stretched. Speculation had focused on Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, a Colombian senator and a Chinese dissident, along with an Afghan woman's rights activist.

Nominators include former laureates; current and former members of the committee and their staff; members of national governments and legislatures; university professors of law, theology, social sciences, history and philosophy; leaders of peace research and foreign affairs institutes; and members of international courts of law.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091009/ap_on_re_eu/eu_nobel_peace

Obama is more deserving than some of the other political leaders nominated, such as Nicholas Sarkozy. Obama ran on a courageous ticket to undertake the immense tasks of solving problems inherited from GW Bush. Detractors should realise that it is a very difficult global political environment Obama has to deal with on top of his domestic economic and healthcare agenda.

Past American winners :

President Theodore Roosevelt - 1906
President Woodrow Wilson - 1919.
President Jimmy Carter - 2002
Al Gore - 2002

Not surprisingly, the Republicans are the harshest critics of Obama winning the Nobel peace prize. It may be too early to award Obama who was nominated days after he assume office. The award might put great pressure and high expectations of his presidency which is still struggling to undo many sins and mistakes of the past and chart new directions for America and hot spots in the world. In a way, Obama's hands could be tied. Trust me, Obama is not in an enviable position. We should be glad that this time round, the Nobel committee did not award advocates with controversial agenda.

Obama's awkward peace prize

SMH Editorial
December 11, 2009

BARACK OBAMA'S Nobel peace prize must be the most unlooked-for honour in the history of international relations. It could not have been bestowed at a more inopportune time, coming in the week after the US President ordered 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Some of those young Americans, inevitably, go to their deaths, while their commander-in--chief is commended. Protesters in Oslo greeted Obama by spraying ''You won it, now earn it'' on the footpath near his hotel. They have a point - and an embarrassing one for all involved.

Obama was surprised by the commendation, and has rightly acknowledged that he is not in the league of laureates like Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King. (Let's pass over Al Gore and Henry Kissinger.) At best, the honour is premature. Obama has had little time to earn it.

For the Nobel committee it is a misstep. The committee were apparently as enchanted by the charismatic President's campaign promises as by the breathless, tearful voters on election night. Promises of hope and change are not enough - not yet. More than the merit of Obama's fledgling record, though, what the prize really reflects is the Europeans' visceral hatred of George W. Bush's honky, paranoid unilateralism and his administration's open contempt for aspects of international law. It is an expression of the relief and joy felt by many in Europe and elsewhere that an inspiring, consensus-building US President yanked the helm of the ship of state from the neoconservatives and steered it back towards multilateralism.

But all it can do is set up Obama - a man of great talents and honourable intentions - for failure. His fellow Americans could not agree more: a poll conducted by a Connecticut university this week found that a mere 26 per cent of voters believe he deserves the Nobel, while 66 per cent believe he does not.

Yet it is not as though Obama could easily turn it down. The Vietnamese leader Le Duc Tho rejected his Nobel prize in 1973 (awarded jointly to Kissinger, who accepted it), saying there was not yet peace in his country. Fair enough. But Obama's citation is "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples". He could hardly refuse on those grounds. The recognition that security and diplomacy are not an either-or proposition is a cornerstone of his foreign policy, and the reason that much of the world greeted his presidency so warmly.

His fly-in, fly-out approach in Oslo, and a gracious speech which addresses the contradictions apparent in the award, are the best that can be expected of him. In private, though, it is hard to imagine Obama will be pleased.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/editorial/obamas-awkward-peace-prize-20091210-km9v.html