US President Barack Obama wins Nobel Prize

A surprised world greeted the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to U.S. President Barack Obama with a mixture of praise and skepticism on Friday.

In its announcement, the Norwegian Nobel Committee hailed Obama's "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg referred to U.S. President Barack Obama's Nobel peace prize worthy work for peace and disarmament, saying: "This is a surprising, an exciting prize. It remains to be seen if he will succeed with reconciliation, peace and nuclear disarmament."

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Afghanistan's Taliban mocked the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to U.S. President Barack Obama, saying it was absurd to give the Noble Peace Prize for Peace to Obama when he had ordered 21,000 extra troops to Afghanistan this year.

"The Nobel prize for peace? Obama should have won the 'Nobel Prize for escalating violence and killing civilians'," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.

Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency -- awarded the prize in 2005 -- commented on Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize: "I cannot think of anyone today more deserving of this honor. In less than a year in office, he has transformed the way we look at ourselves and the world we live in and rekindled hope for a world at peace with itself."

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said in a statement aboute U.S. President Barack Obama winning the Nobel Prize for Peace: "The award of the prize to President Obama, leader of the most significant military power in the world, at the beginning of his mandate, is a reflection of the hopes he has raised globally with his vision of a world without nuclear weapons."

In the Middle East, chief Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat said the award could be a good omen for peace in the region.

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"We hope that he will be able to achieve peace in the Middle East and achieve Israeli withdrawal to 1967 borders and establish an independent Palestinian state on 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as its capital," he told Reuters

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told army radio he believed the award would enhance Obama's ability "to contribute to establishing regional peace in the Middle East and a settlement between us and the Palestinians that will bring security, prosperity and growth to all the peoples of the region."

The Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip and opposes a peace treaty with Israel, was more skeptical.

"Unless real and deep-rooted change is made in American policy toward recognizing the rights of the Palestinian people I would think such a prize would be useless," Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas prime minister in the Gaza Strip, told reporters after Friday prayers.

REAL CHANGE

Saleh al-Mutlaq, a senior Iraqi Sunni Muslim lawmaker, told Reuters: "I think he deserves this prize. Obama succeeded to make a real change in the policy of the United States -- a change from a policy that was exporting evil to the world to a policy exporting peace and stability to the world."

In Indonesia, Masdar Mas'udi, deputy head of Indonesia's largest Muslim organization Nahdatul Ulama, said: "I think it's a good thing. I think it's appropriate because he is the only American president who has reached out to us in peace. On the issues of race, religion, skin color, he has an open attitude."

In Pakistan, Liaqat Baluch, a senior leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a conservative religious party, said: "It's a joke. How embarrassing for those who awarded it to him because he's done nothing for peace. What change has he brought in Iraq, the Middle East or Afghanistan?"

South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu, awarded the prize himself in 1984, hailed the award as "a magnificent endorsement for the first African American president in history."

Two other former recipients, Mikhail Gorbachev and Wangari Maathai, were among the first to offer their congratulations.

Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader awarded the prize in 1990, was quoted by Itar-Tass news agency as saying: "In these hard times people who are capable of taking responsibility, who have a vision, commitment and political will should be supported."

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Maathai, a Kenyan environmentalist who won in 2004, referred to Obama's mixed heritage of a Kenyan father and American mother, called it "another very encouraging event for Africa."

From Obama's ancestral village of Kogelo in western Kenya his uncle Said Obama told Reuters: "It is humbling for us as a family and we share in Barack's honor. We congratulate him."

Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangarai, who had been among the favorites to win this year, said Obama was an extraordinary example.

"I wish to congratulate President Obama. I think he is a deserving candidate," he told Reuters during a visit to Spain.

Herta Müller (Mueller) - Life Behind the Iron Curtain

Being of German decent with parents and other family members who went through the trials and tribulations of the World War II and the subsequent 45 years of Soviet Occupation, the story of Herta Müller strikes a chord.

It brings to mind a joke I heard from an Aunt of mine who lived through the 45 years of occupation in East Germany.

A Canadian, an American and a German were in a bar talking about their homeland. The were discussing the vast wilderness in each of the countries. The American said, "Our wilderness is so vast you could go hiking and not come out for a week" The Canadian rhetorted, "That's nothing eh, in Canada you could go out for a hike and not come back for a week." The German responded, "Zat is nozing, in East Germany, ze zoviets came in in 1945 and did not find their vay out for 45 years."

Sure, it looses a little in translation but I think you get the point.

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All humour aside, the reason Herta Müller being awarded the Nobel Prize for jounalist is so great in my mind is, for once, the German side of this whole conflict is being showcased to the world. We are an opinionated bunch, but for the most part, we have sat off to the side almost shamed by the occurances of the war.

I would hear stories about my parents being forced to move out of their homes and the long march to Danske. Horror stories of family members being lost and German women and children being attacked and raped by foreign soldiers.

Herta Mueller, a member of Romania's ethnic German minority who was persecuted for her critical depictions of life behind the Iron Curtain, won the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature Thursday in an award seen as a nod to the 20th anniversary of communism's collapse.

Mueller, born in Romania's Transylvania Banat region, was honored for work that "with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed," the Swedish Academy said.

"I am very surprised and still can not believe it," Mueller said in a statement released by her publisher in Germany. "I can't say anything more at the moment."

The decision was expected to keep alive the controversy surrounding the academy's pattern of awarding the prize to European writers.

"If you are European (it is) easier to relate to European literature," Peter Englund, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, told The Associated Press. "It's the result of psychological bias that we really try to be aware of. It's not the result of any program."

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Mueller, 56, made her debut in 1982 with a collection of short stories titled "Niederungen," or "Nadirs," depicting the harshness of life in a small, German-speaking village in Romania. It was promptly censored by the communist government.

In 1984 an uncensored version was smuggled to Germany, where it was published and devoured by readers. That work was followed by "Oppressive Tango" in Romania but she was eventually prohibited from publishing inside her country for her criticism of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's rule and its feared secret police, the Securitate.

"The Romanian national press was very critical of these works while, outside of Romania, the German press received them very positively," the Academy said.

Mueller, whose father served in the Waffen SS during World War II, is the third European to win the prize in a row and the 10th German, joining Guenter Grass in 1999 and Heinrich Boell in 1972.

"I think that there is an incredible force in what she writes, she has a very, very unique style," Englund said. "You read half the page and you know at once that it's Herta Mueller.

"At the same time she has something to tell, partly from her own background as a persecuted dissident in Romania, but also her own background as a stranger in her own country, a stranger to the political regime, a stranger to the majority language, and a stranger to her own family," he added.

Though Englund said the award was not timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the fall of communism, that's how it was perceived by many observers.

"By giving the award to Herta Mueller, who grew up in a German-speaking minority in Romania, (the committee) has recognized an author who refuses to let the inhumane side of life under communism be forgotten, 20 years after the end of the East-West conflict," said Michael Krueger, head of Mueller's publisher Hanser Verlag.

Mueller emigrated to Germany with her husband in 1987, two years before Ceausescu was toppled from power amid the widening communist collapse across eastern Europe.

"She is a very sincere writer and wrote about what happened to her and this is something that must have impressed the judges," said Romanian actor Ion Caramitru, an anti-communist who rode atop a tank to the television station in Bucharest during the 1989 revolt and now heads the country's national theater.



"This prize is the international recognition of the oppression of what happened in Romania and Eastern Europe," he told the AP.

Emil Hurezeanu, a Romanian journalist who knew Mueller well, said the author was forced to leave Romania because of harassment by the Securitate, which is alleged to have had more than 700,000 informants.

"She worked as a translator in a modest factory near Timisoara. She was persecuted, she was fired from her job as they used to do. Manuscripts of one of her books was carried to Germany by a German diplomat."

"Her books and language are inspired by Romania. She has a very strong prose. She writes in a lively, poetic, corrosive style," he said.

Most of her work is in German, but some works have been translated into English, French and Spanish, including "The Passport," "The Land of Green Plums," "Traveling on One Leg" and "The Appointment."

Mueller's latest novel, "Atemschaukel," or "Swinging Breath" is up for this year's German Book Prize, which will be announced Monday.

Mueller is the 12th woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature. Recent female winners include Austria's Elfriede Jelinek in 2004 and British writer Doris Lessing in 2007.

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It's the first time four women have won Nobel Prizes in the same year. U.S.-based researchers Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider were among the medicine winners and the chemistry prize included Israel's Ada Yonath.

The prize includes a 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) prize and will be handed out Dec. 10 in the Swedish capital.

With literature, four of the 2009 Nobel Prizes have now been announced. American scientists won the medicine and physics prizes, while two Americans and an Israeli researcher shared the award for chemistry.

The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the economics award on Monday.

Alfred Nobel, a Swedish industrialist who invented dynamite, established the Nobel Prizes in his will in 1895. The first awards were handed out six years later.

Besides the monetary prize, each award includes a diploma, a gold medal and an invitation to the prize ceremony in Stockholm on Dec. 10. The peace prize is handed out in Oslo.

Last year's literature prize went to French novelist Jean-Marie Le Clezio.