NOBEL SECRETARY: 'MISTAKE' TO GIVE OBAMA PEACE PRIZE
Ex-official says prez failed to deliver dream of nuclear disarmament
Cheryl Chumley
Geir Lundestad, former secretary of the Nobel Peace Prize committee, said in his just-released book President Obama hasn’t delivered on what award judges hoped he would, when they selected him in 2009 for the high global honor.
Lundestad, in a book released Thursday, said the Nobel committee members thought giving Obama the prize would help the president achieve his goals on nuclear disarmament, and bolster his stature as a newcomer to the White House. But in that latter regard, it actually had the opposite effect, Lundestad said, the Associated Press reported.
“Even many of Obama’s supporters believed that the prize was a mistake,” he wrote, AP said. “In that sense, the committee didn’t achieve what it had hoped for.”
Lundestad served for 25 years as the non-voting secretary of the committee. He just stepped down in 2014, and has since taken the almost unheard of action of publicly speaking on the committee’s selection process.
He also pointed in his book to the off-guard reaction Obama and his staff had to the award.
“In the White House, they quickly realized that they needed to travel to Oslo,” he wrote, recalling how Obama aides were so startled by the award they researched the necessity of Obama being present at the acceptance ceremony.
Lundestad said he didn’t disagree with the committee’s choice of Obama as recipient, despite the fact the president had barely been in the national eyes when he was selected. He said his main complaint was the committee “thought it would strengthen Obama and it didn’t have [that] effect.”
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/09/nobel-secretary-mistake-to-give-obama-peace-prize/#diKKduuIbjDth36x.99
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