Nobel committee to Trump: Your push for peace prize won’t sway us

Trump

Donald Trump’s obsession with winning the Nobel Peace Prize next month may have hit a hitch — the stubborn independence of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which insisted to AFP that it cannot be swayed.

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has made it clear he wants the prestigious accolade, which his Democratic rival Barack Obama won to the surprise of many shortly after taking office in 2009.

The 79-year-old billionaire has taken every opportunity to say he “deserves it”, claiming to have ended six wars, even though those in Gaza and Ukraine — which he says he wants to resolve — continue to rage.

“Of course, we do notice that there is a lot of media attention towards particular candidates,” the secretary of the committee, Kristian Berg Harpviken, told AFP in an interview in Oslo.

“But that really has no impact on the discussions that are going on in the committee.”

“The committee considers each nominee on his or her own merits,” he said.

This year’s laureate will be announced on October 10.

Trump has backed up his claim that he deserves the prize by pointing out that several foreign leaders, from Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu to Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev, have either nominated him or backed his nomination.

However, they would have had to have been extremely quick or prescient for this year’s prize, given that nominations had to be submitted by January 31, just 11 days after Trump took office.

“To be nominated is not necessarily a great achievement. The great achievement is to become a laureate,” Berg Harpviken said.

“You know, the list of individuals who can nominate is quite long.”

Those eligible include members of parliament and cabinet ministers from every country in the world, former laureates and some university professors. Thousands or even tens of thousands of people are therefore able to put a name forward.