Oslo: Barack Obama’s administration rebuked Norway after he won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, saying it was an awkward honour for an as-yet untested leader, a Norwegian diplomat revealed on Thursday.
“My most embarrassing day at the UN, at the time when I was Norway’s ambassador there, was when Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize was announced. Nobody was talking about it,” said Morten Wetland, who served at the UN from 2008 to 2012.
“My colleague in Washington received a reprimand from Mr Obama’s chief of staff (Rahn Emmanuel, at the time). The word ‘fawning’ was used,” Mr Wetland added in an article in Norwegian daily Dagens Naeringsliv.
The diplomat said that the prize put Mr Obama, who was nominated for the prize just weeks after taking office, in a difficult position. “An American president wants to set his own agenda. Here he was forced into a role that he hadn’t sought,” he said.
