OSLO (AP) — President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, citing his outreach to the Muslim world and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation.
The stunning choice made Obama the third sitting
U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize and shocked Nobel observers
because Obama took office less than two weeks before the Feb. 1
nomination deadline. Obama’s name had been mentioned in speculation
before the award but many Nobel watchers believed it was too early to
award the president.
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.
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. The
plaudit appeared to be a slap at President George W. Bush from a
committee that harshly criticized Obama’s predecessor for resorting to
largely unilateral military action in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror
attacks.
Rather than recognizing concrete achievement, the 2009
prize appeared intended to support 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,” Thorbjoern Jagland, chairman of the
Nobel Committee said. “In the past year Obama has been a key person for
important initiatives in the U.N. for nuclear disarmament and to set a
completely new agenda for the Muslim world and East-West relations.”
He
added that the committee endorsed “Obama’s appeal that ‘Now is the time
for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response
to global challenges.'”
President Theodore Roosevelt won the award in 1906 and President Woodrow Wilson won in 1919.
The
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.
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 too someone … who has the power
to contribute to peace,” Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said.
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.
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.”
Unlike the other Nobel Prizes,
which are awarded by Swedish institutions, he said the peace prize
should be given out by a five-member committee elected by the Norwegian
Parliament. Sweden and Norway were united under the same crown at the
time of Nobel’s death.
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.
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Associated Press Writer Ian MacDougall contributed to this report.
