BARACK OBAMA WINS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
9 October 2009
Barack Obama is the third sitting US President to be given the prize
after Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.
BY WALTER GIBBS and ALAN COWELL
The New York Times
OSLO - In a stunning surprise, the Nobel Committee announced Friday that it had awarded its annual peace prize to President Obama “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” less than nine months after he took office.
“He has created a new international climate,” the committee said in its announcement. With American forces deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Obama’s name had not figured in speculation about the winner until minutes before the prize was announced here.
Likely candidates had been seen here as including human rights activists in China and Afghanistan and political figures in Africa.
But the committee said it wanted to enhance Mr. Obama’s diplomatic efforts so far rather than reward him for events in the future.
Thorbjorn Jagland, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee and a former prime minister of Norway, told reporters that Mr. Obama had already contributed enough to world diplomacy and understanding to deserve the prize./.../
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