VARIOUS: Tsvangirai, Kouchner and Berlusconi react to Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize

Record ID: 491935

  • Title: VARIOUS: Tsvangirai, Kouchner and Berlusconi react to Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize
  • Date: 10th October 2009
  • Summary: VALLADOLID, SPAIN (OCTOBER 9, 2009) (REUTERS) PHOTOGRAPHERS WAITING OUTSIDE CRISTOBAL GABARRON FOUNDATION VARIOUS OF ZIMBABWE PRIME MINISTER MORGAN TSVANGIRAI ARRIVING AT CRISTOBAL GABARRON FOUNDATION CLOSE-UP OF TSVANGIRAI TSVANGIRAI TALKING INSIDE FOUNDATION TSVANGIRAI ARRIVING AT INTERVIEW TSVANGIRAI AT INTERVIEW TSVANGIRAI BEEN INTERVIEWED (SOUNDBITE) (English) ZIMBABWE PRIME MINISTER, MORGAN TSVANGIRAI, SAYING: "I wish to congratulate President Obama. I thinks he is a deserving candidate. I cannot determine how people arrive to those conclusions and for me he's an extraordinary example." WIDE OF TSVANGIRAI AT INTERVIEW
  • Embargoed: 25th October 2009 12:00
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  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA7L4NDEVUACW94NPDIAUETP22D
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  • Story Text: Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi congratulate U.S. President Barack Obama on winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
    Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai congratulated on Friday (October 9) U.S. President Barack Obama for being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
    "I wish to congratulate President Obama. I thinks he is a deserving candidate. I cannot determine how people arrive to those conclusions. For me he's an extraordinary example." he told Reuters.
    Top contenders for the 1.4-million-U.S. dollar prize were Colombian peace broker Piedad Cordoba, Afghan rights activist Sima Samar and Tsvaringirai himself.
    Tsvangirai was in Spain to receive the international Cristobal Gabarron life achievement prize.
    U.S. President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for giving the world "hope for a better future" and striving for nuclear disarmament.
    In Paris, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner expressed his delight at Obama's bagging of the Nobel Peace Prize.
    "I would like to congratulate him. I am delighted by this news. He will have to prove himself even more from now on," Kouchner said.
    In Rome, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi also congratulated the Nobel winner.
    "While Cabinet was underway, we found out that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. We paid tribute to him by a sincere ovation. A President winner of the Nobel Peace Prize will be an investment for the future as he will have to be very ecumenical towards everybody," Berlusconi told a news conference.
    The decision to award one of the world's top accolades to a president less than nine months into his first term, who has yet to score a major foreign policy success, came as a big surprise and provoked strong international criticism as well as praise.
    "I think it has been a legitimate win on the part of the President, I consider him to be the best president on earth. Actually he is the best leader and he's the kind of leader that other leaders should emulate across the globe, so it has been a legitimate win," said Collins Nyaundi, a student in Nairobi.
    "Well I think it's a bit premature for Barack Obama to get that Nobel Peace Prize. But we also need to look backwards into his past records before he took office, he also made strides then," a Nairobi businessman told Reuters.
    The first African-American to hold his country's highest office, Obama has called for disarmament and worked to restart the stalled Middle East peace process since taking office in January.
    Obama is the third senior U.S. Democrat to win the prize this decade after former Vice President Al Gore won in 2007 along with the U.N. climate panel and Jimmy Carter in 2002. The prize, worth 10 million Swedish crowns (1.4 million U.S. dollars), will be handed over in Oslo on December 10.
    END
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