THE AUSTRALIAN: THE Nobel Peace Prize was discredited if Barack Obama could be nominated for the award after just 11 days in office and win it nine months later, former foreign minister Alexander Downer said yesterday.
Mr Downer called the US President's surprise win a farce, saying it was a pity Mr Obama had not refused the award.
He singled out Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai as a worthy alternative who had been ignored after years of struggling for human rights.
"The peace prize has to be for actual achievement - not potential - and it has to be achievement in promoting world peace, not raising the prestige of the American state, which is largely what Barack Obama has done so far," Mr Downer told the ABC.
Mr Obama had been in office for just 11 days when nominations for this year's Nobel Peace Prize closed on February 1. He spent most of those first days settling into the White House.
Although humbly questioning whether he was deserving, he described the prize as a "call to action".
The award's founder, Alfred Nobel, decreed the annual prize was to be bestowed for achievements "during the preceding year". According to his will, the winner "shall have done the most, or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses".
The Norwegian judges took an alternative approach, handing the prize to Mr Obama for future works. Thorbjorn Jagland, the committee's chairman, defended the award in the face of public outcry, saying: "It was because we would like to support what he is trying to achieve."
It took two other former US presidents, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, a combined total of 12 years before they were given the award. >>> Brad Norington, Washington correspondent | Tuesday, October 13, 2009
