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By Doug Mellgren
ASSOCIATED PRESS
OSLO — The committee that awards the
century-old Nobel Peace Prize, spurred by violence in the Middle East, has
broken with a tradition of never second-guessing itself in
public.
Some of its five members are
saying the 1994 prize shouldn't have gone to Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon
Peres.
To the anger of
Israel's supporters, the dissenters didn't extend their criticism to Mr. Peres'
co-laureate, Palestinian leader Yasser
Arafat.
Mr. Arafat shared the prize with
Mr. Peres and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin for the peace efforts, now
collapsed, that included the 1993 Oslo Agreement negotiated in the Norwegian
capital. Mr. Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by an ultranationalist Israeli who
opposed his peace moves.
The 1994 prize, worth
a shared $933,000, was controversial from the outset, with committee member
Kaare Kristiansen quitting rather than condone a prize to Mr. Arafat, a man he
branded a "terrorist."
With Israelis and
Palestinians again killing each other, emotions are back on the
boil.
The trigger was committee member Hanna
Kvanmo, a retired left-wing politician who broke with the tradition of silence
in early April.
Replying to a newspaper's
questions, she said she wished Mr. Peres' prize could be revoked, because as a
member of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's coalition government, he was
party to the Israeli military incursion.
"If it
had been now, he would not have gotten the prize," Miss Kvanmo
said.
Another member, Lutheran Bishop Gunnar
Staalsett, said Mr. Peres was violating the "intention and spirit" of the
prize.
Committee Chairman Gunnar Berge
criticized the Israeli government, but added that "I am completely sure the
situation would have been different if Shimon Peres had been Israel's prime
minister."
Another committee member, Sissel
Roenbeck, held the Israeli government largely responsible for the conflict and
urged Mr. Peres to return to a policy of peace and
dialogue.
And Mr. Arafat? Miss Kvanmo didn't
think he had forfeited his prize because, she said, he had tried to carry out
the Oslo accords and couldn't be blamed for the violence since Israel had him
under virtual arrest.
Israel maintains Mr.
Arafat has orchestrated the violence that began long before it besieged his West
Bank headquarters, and its supporters were quick to protest the committee
members' remarks.
"We have had 200 to 300
contacts a week, which is extraordinary," said Olav Njoelstad, acting director
of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, which assists the committee. He said most
defended Mr. Peres and wanted Mr. Arafat's prize
revoked.
The
California-based Simon Wiesenthal Center wrote to Norway's prime minister, Kjell
Magne Bondevik, calling Mr. Arafat "the godfather of
terrorism."
"We heard nothing from
Norway or the Nobel Committee when Israeli civilians were butchered," it
said.
Norway's prime minister, who is
considered generally pro-Israel, said the committee was facing an unusual
situation: Two former enemies who were honored for making peace were at war
again. "It is a very strange situation," he
said.
Nobel statutes say that once the prize is
awarded, it cannot be withdrawn or returned, and even the rare winners who
decline it, such as Vietnam's Le Duc Tho, remain listed on the laureates'
roll.
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020423-73728078.htm
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