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President
Obama receives his Nobel Peace Prize in 2009
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In a break with Nobel
tradition, the former secretary of the Nobel Peace Prize committee says the
2009 award to President Barack Obama failed to live up to the panel's
expectations. Geir
Lundestad writes in a book to be released on Thursday that the committee had
expected the prize to deliver a boost to Obama. Instead the award was met with
fierce criticism in the U.S., where many argued Obama had not been president
long enough to have an impact worthy of the Nobel.
"Even
many of Obama's supporters believed that the prize was a mistake,"
Lundestad wrote in excerpts of the book read by The Associated Press. "In
that sense the committee didn't achieve what it had hoped for."
Lundestad,
who stepped down last year after 25 years as the non-voting secretary of the
secretive committee, noted that Obama was startled by the award and that his
staff even investigated whether other winners had skipped the prize ceremony in
Oslo.
AP
report continues:
That
has happened only on rare occasions, such as when dissidents were held back by
their governments.
"In
the White House they quickly realized that they needed to travel to Oslo,"
Lundestad wrote.
Speaking
to AP on Wednesday, Lundestad said he didn't disagree with the decision to
award the president but the committee "thought it would strengthen Obama
and it didn't have this effect."
It
is rare for Nobel officials to discuss the proceedings of the secretive
committee or publicly criticize each other. But in the book Lundestad also
fired a parting shot at Thorbjorn Jagland who was the committee chairman for
six years and is now a regular member.
Lundestad
said that as a former Norwegian prime minister and sitting head of the Council
of Europe human rights organization, Jagland should never have been appointed
to the committee, which frequently emphasizes its independence.
Jagland declined to
comment, said Daniel Holtgen, his spokesman at the Council of Europe.
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