Geir Lundestad hopes prize will act as a spur for Baract Obama to continue his quest for international co-operation, writes MARK RODDENin Oslo
THE SECRETARY of the Norwegian Nobel committee has warned that the institute’s peace prize is “no magic wand” but said he hopes it will encourage US President Barack Obama to continue to promote co-operation in the world.
Geir Lundestad also rejected suggestions that Obama, who will be presented with the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo tomorrow, had yet to achieve enough to be considered for the prestigious honour.
“Something must have been done already because that is the basis for the decision,” he told The Irish Times in Oslo.
“As Desmond Tutu said, nobody has done more to lower the international temperature than Barack Obama has done.
“But we hope that the peace prize can also stimulate him to pursue further action and that he will also get more international support for what he’s trying to do. Because he is basically trying to produce a global response to the many global challenges we are facing and, as he has emphasised himself, even the American president can only do so much.”
Lundestad, also the director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, praised Obama’s attitude to dialogue, human rights and nuclear disarmament.
“We want to emphasise his basic approach and the things he is trying to accomplish. Take Iran as an example. He is trying to negotiate directly with Iran. In the Bush years, the US was on the sideline and left all this to the EU.
“But there’s no guarantee that he will succeed. It’s the same thing in the Middle East. He hopes to bring the Israelis and the Palestinians to the table, but there’s no guarantee that there will be peace.”
Critics have questioned how someone willing to send additional troops to Afghanistan could merit a peace prize, but Lundestad defended Obama’s stance on the issue.
“In Afghanistan he has been searching for some sort of solution,” he said.
“The United States is militarily involved but I think in all fairness we should recognise that . . . any American president will have to undertake certain actions that parts of the world may dislike. But in Afghanistan there is a broad basis of international support for what the United States and its partners are doing.”
Lundestad said it had not been a “particularly difficult decision” to name the US president as this year’s winner. “There are many who think that we should award the prize only for kind of final solutions, when everything has been resolved. There are not many Nobel Peace Prizes like that.”
He said the prize was often given to people who were still trying to achieve more.
“Sometimes they may be close to the finishing line. In 1993 we gave the prize to [Nelson] Mandela and [FW] de Klerk and they had not completed the abolition of apartheid and the transformation in South Africa. But they were almost there.
“But earlier on we had given the prize to [Albert] Lutuli in South Africa for 1960. What had he achieved? At that time, not much.”
Lundestad added: “Martin Luther King gave his wonderful speech in Washington DC at the demonstration in 1963. He talked about the transformation of America but he hadn’t transformed America then. Barack Obama has certainly achieved certain things but he’s far from there.”
The prize has been awarded every year since 1901 and Lundestad believes it can still occasionally contribute to a political process.
“Lech Walesa, for instance, he has said time and again that without the Nobel Peace Prize he would not have been able to do what he did in Poland.
“And of course what happened in Poland in 1989 set the pace for what happened in all the other eastern and central European countries. But the Nobel Peace Prize is no magic wand – it cannot bring peace to the world.”
