TIMES ONLINE: One way that President Obama cannot have expected to make history is as the first reluctant recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
He may, in fact, be thrilled but his task at a white-tie banquet in his honour in Oslo tonight will be to convey in a single short address his gratitude to the Norwegians, his humility in the knowledge that his record of securing peace is thin so far, and his awareness of the troubling reality that the most decisive foreign policy act of his young presidency has been to escalate a long war that his supporters hoped he would bring to a quick end.
Mr Obama landed in Norway this morning night with an unusual entourage for a foreign presidential trip, consisting mainly of family and friends rather than officials. He was accompanied by the First Lady, his half-sister, her husband and his close friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett. They were expected to be joined in Oslo by his other half-sister, Auma Obama, who lives in Kenya.
The presidential party will be on the ground for barely 24 hours, attending today’s banquet and prizegiving ceremony but not a traditional lunch with King Harald, or a concert tomorrow night to be hosted by the film star and occasional rapper Will Smith and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. Barack Obama flies in to collect Nobel Peace Prize as war escalates >>> Giles Whittell in Washington | Thursday, December 10, 2009
TIMES ONLINE: President Obama turned the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony today into a professorial address on why and when the United States was prepared to use force. There was, he admitted in the Oslo City Hall, some controversy over granting the ultimate peace accolade to the commander-in-chief of an army that was engaged in two wars.
The audience, a strange hotchpotch of Hollywood celebrities, pale Scandinavian politicians and rural Norwegians in folk costume, shifted uneasily when he talked about the necessity for bloodshed. Although the Nobel prize was established by the inventor of dynamite its laureates try to avoid dwelling on death.
“Some will kill,” Mr Obama said of the US soldiers under his command. “Some will be killed.”
He was intent on using the Nobel speech to discuss the costs of armed conflict and to examine “the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other”. >>> Roger Boyes in Oslo | Thursday, December 10, 2009
TIMES ONLINE: In full: Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize speech: The text of President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech as provided by the White House >>> | Thursday, December 10, 2009
LE FIGARO: Barack Obama : «La guerre est parfois justifiée» : Le président américain a reçu, jeudi à Oslo, son prix Nobel de la Paix «avec humilité et gratitude» , quelques jours seulement après avoir décidé d'intensifier l'effort de guerre en Afghanistan. >>> Constance Jamet (lefigaro.fr) avec AP | Jeudi 10 Décembre 2009
NZZ ONLINE: Nach der Verleihung des Friedensnobelpreises an den amerikanischen Präsident Barack Obama haben am Donnerstagabend in Oslo mehrere tausend Menschen gegen den Krieg in Afghanistan demonstriert.
Einige Demonstranten forderten auf Transparenten: «Yes we can - stop the war in Afghanistan.» Andere verlangten ein Verbot von Atomwaffen, den Stopp der Blockade des Gazastreifens und ein Ende des israelischen Siedlungsbaus in den Palästinensergebieten.
Wie es am Tag der Nobelpreis-Zeremonie Tradition ist, zeigte sich Obama zusammen mit seiner Frau Michelle kurz auf dem Balkon des Hotels und winkte den Menschen auf dem Platz zu. >>> sda/dpa | Freitag, 11. Dezember 2009
