By KARL RITTER and MATT MOORE, Associated Press Writers
Karl Ritter And Matt Moore, Associated Press
Writers – 18 mins ago
OSLO –
President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel
Peace Prize on Friday in a stunning decision designed to
encourage his initiatives to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions
with the Muslim world and stress diplomacy and cooperation
rather than unilateralism.
Nobel observers were shocked by the unexpected choice so early
in the Obama presidency, which began less than two weeks before the
Feb. 1 nomination deadline.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama woke
up to the news a little before 6 a.m. EDT. The White
House had no immediate comment on the announcement, which
took the administration by surprise.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee decided not to inform Obama
before the announcement because it didn't want to wake him up,
committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said.
"Waking up a president in the middle of the night, this isn't
really something you do," Jagland said.
The Nobel Committee lauded the change in global mood wrought by
Obama's calls for peace and cooperation but recognized initiatives
that have yet to bear fruit: reducing the world stock of nuclear
arms, easing American conflicts with Muslim nations and
strengthening the U.S. role in combating climate
change.
"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama
captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a
better future," Jagland said.
Obama's election and foreign policy moves
caused a dramatic improvement in the image of the U.S. around the
world. A 25-nation poll of 27,000 people released in July by the
Pew Global Attitudes Project found
double-digit boosts to the percentage of people viewing the U.S.
favorably in countries around the world. That indicator had plunged
across the world under President George W.
Bush.
Still, the U.S. remains at war in Iraq and
Afghanistan, the U.S. Congress has yet to
pass a law reducing carbon emissions and
there has been little significant reduction in global nuclear
stockpiles since Obama took office.
"So soon? Too early. He has no contribution so far. He is still
at an early stage. He is only beginning to act," said former
Polish President Lech Walesa, a 1983 Nobel
Peace laureate.
"This is probably an encouragement for him to act. Let's see if
he perseveres. Let's give him time to act," Walesa said.
The award appeared to be a slap at Bush from a committee that
harshly criticized Obama's predecessor for his largely unilateral
military action in the wake of the Sept. 11
terror attacks. The Nobel committee praised Obama's creation of "a
new climate in international politics" and said he had returned
multilateral diplomacy and institutions like the U.N. to the center
of the world stage.
"You have to remember that the world has been in a pretty
dangerous phase," Jagland said. "And anybody who can contribute to
getting the world out of this situation deserves a Nobel Peace Prize."
Unlike the other Nobel Prizes, which are awarded by Swedish
institutions, the peace prize is given out by a five-member
committee elected by the Norwegian Parliament. Like the
Parliament, the committee has a leftist
slant, with three members elected by left-of-center parties.
Jagland said the decision to honor Obama was unanimous.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who won
the prize in 1984, said Obama's award shows great things are
expected from him in coming years.
"It's an award coming near the beginning of the first term of
office of a relatively young president that anticipates an even
greater contribution towards making our world a safer place for
all," Tutu said. "It is an award that speaks to the promise of
President Obama's message of hope."
Until seconds before the award, speculation had focused on a
wide variety of candidates besides Obama: Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, a Colombian
senator, a Chinese dissident and an Afghan woman's rights activist,
among others. The Nobel committee received a record 205 nominations
for this year's prize, though it was not immediately apparent who
nominated Obama.
"The exciting and important thing about this prize is that it's
given to someone ... who has the power to contribute to peace,"
Norwegian Prime Minister Jens
Stoltenberg said.
Obama is the third sitting U.S. president to win the award:
President Theodore Roosevelt won in 1906 and
President Woodrow Wilson was awarded the
prize in 1919.
Wilson received the prize for his role in founding the
League of Nations, the hopeful but ultimately
failed precursor to the contemporary United
Nations.
The Nobel committee chairman said after awarding the 2002 prize
to former Democratic President Jimmy Carter,
for his mediation in international conflicts, that it should be
seen as a "kick in the leg" to the Bush
administration's hard line in the buildup to the
Iraq war.
Five years later, the committee honored Bush's adversary in the
2000 presidential election, Al
Gore, for his campaign to raise awareness about global warming.
Obama was to meet with his top advisers on the Afghan war on
Friday to consider a request by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S.
commander in Afghanistan, to send as many as
40,000 more troops to Afghanistan as the U.S war there enters its
ninth year.
Obama ordered 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan earlier
this year and has continued the use of unmanned
drones for attacks on militants in Afghanistan and
Pakistan, a strategy devised by the Bush
administration. The attacks often kill or injure civilians living
in the area.
In July talks in Moscow, Obama and Russian
President Dmitry Medvedev agreed that their negotiators
would work out a new limit on delivery vehicles for nuclear warheads of between 500 and 1,100. They also
agreed that warhead limits would be reduced from the current range
of 1,700-2,200 to as low as 1,500. The United States now as about
2,200 such warheads, compared to about 2,800 for the Russians.
But there has been no word on whether either side has started to
act on the reductions.
Former Peace
Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei,
director general of the International Atomic Energy
Agency in Vienna, said Obama has already provided
outstanding leadership in the effort to prevent nuclear proliferation.
"In less than a year in office, he has transformed the way we
look at ourselves and the world we live in and rekindled hope for a
world at peace with itself," ElBaradei said. "He has shown an
unshakeable commitment to diplomacy, mutual respect and dialogue as
the best means of resolving conflicts."
Obama also has attempted to restart stalled talks between the
Israelis and Palestinians, but just a day after Obama hosted the
Israeli and Palestinian leaders in New York, Israeli officials
boasted that they had fended off U.S. pressure to halt settlement
construction. Moderate Palestinians said they felt undermined by
Obama's failure to back up his demand for a freeze.
Nominators for the prize 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.
The Nelson
Mandela Foundation welcomed the award on behalf of its
founder Nelson
Mandela, who shared the 1993 Peace Prize with then-South
African President F.W. DeKlerk for their efforts at ending years of
apartheid and laying the groundwork for a democratic
country.
"We trust that this award will strengthen his commitment, as the
leader of the most powerful nation in the world, to continue
promoting peace and the eradication of poverty," the foundation
said.
In his 1895 will, Alfred
Nobel stipulated that the peace prize should go "to the
person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity
between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace
congresses."
The committee has taken a wide interpretation of Nobel's
guidelines, expanding the prize beyond peace mediation to include
efforts to combat poverty, disease and climate
change.
___
Associated Press writers Ian MacDougall in Oslo, Celean Jacobson
in Johannesburg, George Jahn in Vienna and Monika Scislowska in
Warsaw, Poland contributed to this report.