World reaction mixed to Obama's Peace Prize

(NECN: Brian Burnell, Hartford, Conn.) – The announcement that President Barack Obama is the recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize was greeted with an audible gasp. But the chairman of the Nobel committee said even this early in his presidency Mr. Obama has earned it. “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given his people hope for a better future,” Nobel Committee Chair Thorbjorn Jagland said. Among those surprised by the decision was the president himself. “I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations,” President Obama said. The World Affairs Council of Connecticut is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that promotes greater understanding of global ideas and issues. Executive director Felicity Harley says she thinks the committee was acknowledging the American people as well as the President. “I saw it as a tremendous tip of the hat to really the American people because we have elected a president who is so positive and so full of hope,” Felicity Harley of the World Affairs Council of Connecticut said. She adds there are tangible reasons, too. Like Mr. Obama’s leadership on nuclear non-proliferation, global warming and world diplomacy. “I think its wonderful he actually sat on the Security Council. Not many sitting presidents have done that at the U.N.,” Harley said. But there is criticism of the choice from around the world as well. Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh said “if there isn’t a change in American politics towards the rights of the Palestinian people, I don’t think that this prize will change anything.” And some residents of Jerusalem say it is simply too soon in Mr. Obama’s presidency. “I think that it’s a little premature, ‘A’, and, ‘B’, I think his ideas of peace are a little different than what true peace really is,” David Waxman of Jerusalem said. And in Afghanistan some people say under President Obama a lot of Afghan civilians have died in American bombing raids and others have been killed in the name of the Taliban.