Trump’s push for peace prize won’t sway us – Nobel committee

Donald Trump’s obsession with winning the Nobel Peace Prize adjacent period whitethorn person deed a hitch — the stubborn independency of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which insisted to AFP that it cannot beryllium swayed.

Since returning to the White House successful January, Trump has made it wide helium wants the prestigious accolade, which his Democratic rival Barack Obama won to the astonishment of galore soon aft taking bureau successful 2009.

The 79-year-old billionaire has taken each accidental to accidental helium “deserves it”, claiming to person ended six wars, adjacent though those successful Gaza and Ukraine – which helium says helium wants to resoluteness – proceed to rage.

“Of course, we bash announcement that determination is simply a batch of media attraction towards peculiar candidates,” the caput of the committee, Kristian Berg Harpviken, told AFP successful an interrogation successful Oslo.

“But that truly has nary interaction connected the discussions that are going connected successful the committee.

“The committee considers each idiosyncratic nominee connected his oregon her ain merits,” helium said.

This year’s laureate volition beryllium announced connected October 10.

Trump has backed up his assertion that helium deserves the prize by pointing retired that respective overseas leaders, from Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu to Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev, person either nominated him oregon backed his nomination.

However, they would person to person been highly quick, oregon prescient, for this year’s prize fixed that nominations had to beryllium submitted by January 31, conscionable 11 days aft Trump took office.

Phone call

“To beryllium nominated is not needfully a large achievement. The large accomplishment is to go a laureate,” Berg Harpviken said.

“You know, the database of individuals who tin nominate is rather long.”

Those eligible see members of parliament and furniture ministers from each state successful the world, erstwhile laureates and immoderate assemblage professors. Thousands oregon adjacent tens of thousands of radical are truthful capable to enactment a sanction forward.

This twelvemonth the committee volition prime the victor from a longlist of 338 individuals and organisations. The database is kept concealed for 50 years.

The astir worthy candidates marque it onto a shortlist, with each sanction past evaluated by an expert.

“When the committee discusses, it’s that cognition basal that frames the discussion. It’s not immoderate media study has received the astir attraction successful the past 24 hours,” said Berg Harpviken, who guides the committee but doesn’t vote.

“We are precise alert that each twelvemonth determination are a fig of campaigns, and we bash our utmost to operation the process and the meetings successful specified a mode that we are not unduly influenced by immoderate campaign,” helium said.

Trump raised the contented of the Peace Prize with Norway’s Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg — the erstwhile NATO caput wide — during a telephone telephone astir tariffs astatine the extremity of July, according to fiscal regular Dagens Naeringsliv.

The concern ministry confirmed the telephone had taken spot but not whether the 2 had discussed the Nobel.

Unlikely laureate?

While the 5 members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee are nominated by Norway’s parliament, the committee insists its decisions are taken independently of enactment authorities and the sitting government.

A lawsuit successful constituent is that it ignored the Norwegian government’s discreet warnings and awarded the 2010 prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, sparking a diplomatic heavy frost betwixt Beijing and Oslo that lasted for years.

“The Nobel Committee acts wholly independently and cannot let itself to instrumentality those considerations into relationship erstwhile it discusses idiosyncratic candidates,” Berg Harpviken said.

Norway is simply a steadfast believer successful the multilateralism that prize creator Alfred Nobel defended successful his beingness but which has been upended by Trump’s “America First” policy.

So experts determination spot small accidental of the US president getting the nod.

“This benignant of unit usually turns retired to beryllium counter-productive,” said Halvard Leira, probe manager astatine the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI).

“If the committee were to springiness the prize to Trump now, it would evidently beryllium accused of kowtowing” and fl...