Obama receives Nobel Peace Prize

OSLO, Norway (AP) — A wartime president being honored for peace, Barack Obama said Thursday that criticism of his Nobel prize as premature might recede if he advances goals such as a nuclear-free world and tackling climate change.

But, he added, proving doubters wrong is “not really my concern.”

“If I’m not successful, then all the praise in the world won’t disguise that fact,” said Obama from this chilly, damp Nordic capital where he is picking up his Nobel Peace Prize.

The Nobel committee announced Obama had won the peace prize in October when he wasn’t even nine months on the job, recognizing his aspirations to reshape the way the U.S. deals with the world much more than his actual achievements. “It was a great surprise to me,” Obama said after meeting with Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg. “I have no doubt that there are others who may be more deserving.”

READ full text of Mr. Obama’s speech in Oslo.

Adding fresh irony to the award, Obama announced just days before coming here to formally accept it that he is ordering 30,000 more U.S. troops into war in Afghanistan.

This has not gone unnoticed, with peace activists staging a protest to coincide with the Nobel ceremonies.

The president’s motorcade arrived at Oslo’s high-rise government complex to a few dozen anti-war protesters gathered behind wire fences nearby. Dressed in black hoods and waving banners, the demonstrators banged drums and chanted anti-war slogans. “The Afghan people are paying the price,” some shouted.

Greenpeace and anti-war activists planned larger demonstrations later that were expected to draw several thousand people. Protesters have plastered posters around the city, featuring an Obama campaign poster altered with skepticism to say, “Change?”

Stoltenberg defended Obama as a Nobel laureate.

“I cannot think about anyone else who has done more for peace during the last year than Barack Obama,” Stoltenberg said at Obama’s side. “I think it’s a very bold and important decision.”

In awarding the prize to Obama, the Nobel panel cited his call for a world free of nuclear weapons, for a more engaged U.S. role in combating global warming, for his support of the United Nations and multilateral diplomacy and for broadly capturing the attention of the world and giving its people “hope.”

But the list of Nobel peace laureates over the last 100 years includes transformative figures and giants on the world stage. They include heroes of the president, such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela and others he has long admired, like George Marshall, who launched a postwar recovery plan for Europe.

So the choice of Obama was such a surprise, and derided so loudly by some critics as premature, that the Nobel committee took the unusual step of defending itself. Obama seemed Thursday to try to distance himself from that debate.

“On a whole host of initiatives that I’ve put forward this year, some of which are beginning to bear fruit, the goal is not to win a popularity contest or to win an award — even one as esteemed as the Nobel Peace Prize,” he said. “The goal is to advance American interests.”

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