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Annan Accepts Nobel Peace Prize After Warning Against Taking War to Iraq
With additional reporting by Neveen A. Salem
OSLO, Dec. 10 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - After cautioning Sunday against the expansion of the "war on terrorism" to Iraq, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan received the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize on Monday together with the United Nations, and vowed to step up efforts to eradicate poverty, prevent conflicts and promote democracy in the 21st century.
Annan and Han Seung-Soo, the South Korean foreign minister and president of the U.N. General Assembly, each received a gold Nobel medal and a diploma from the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Gunnar Berge, in a formal ceremony in Oslo marking the 100th anniversary of the prestigious award.
The 63-year-old U.N. secretary-general appealed in his speech for religious and ethnic tolerance in the world, following the anti-U.S. and anti-Islam vitriol that surfaced after the deadly September 11 attacks.
"Each of us has the right to take pride in our particular faith or heritage. But the notion that what is ours is necessarily in conflict with what is theirs is both false and dangerous," resulting in "endless enmity and conflict," he said after receiving the prize.
But "it need not be so."
"We can love what we are, without hating what - and who - we are not. We can thrive in our own tradition, even as we learn from others, and come to respect their teachings," he said.
Annan said he believed the Nobel Peace Prize was an important tool to promote and reward peace.
"In a world filled with weapons of war and all too often words of war, the Nobel Committee has become a vital agent for peace. Sadly, a prize for peace is a rarity in this world," the career U.N. diplomat from Ghana said.
"Most nations have monuments or memorials to war, bronze salutations to heroic battles, archways of triumph. But peace has no parade, no pantheon of victory."
Annan addressed his hope for the future, describing the U.N.'s forthcoming mission to work towards an indivisible human community.
"We have entered the third millennium through a gate of fire. If today, after the horror of 11 September, we see better, and we see further - we will realize that humanity is indivisible," he said.
"In the early beginnings of the 21st century - a century already violently disabused of any hopes that progress towards global peace and prosperity is inevitable - this new reality can no longer be ignored," he said, noting that "new threats make no distinction between races, nations or regions."
In the new century, the U.N.'s mission would be defined by a "new, more profound, awareness of the sanctity and dignity of every human life, regardless of race or religion," he said, going on to quote the Holy Qur'an, the Christian Gospel and the Torah, among others.
"From this vision of the role of the United Nations in the next century flow three key priorities for the future: eradicating poverty, preventing conflict and promoting democracy," he said.
The day before he received the prize, Annan warned against the widening of the current conflict in Afghanistan to Iraq, as hints about such action spread in Washington.
Speaking at a news conference Sunday, Annan cautioned the United States not to expand its "war on terrorism" to Iraq as that war would be lost unless waged by all countries acting in concert.
"Any attempt or any decision to attack Iraq today will be unwise and could lead to a major escalation in the region," Annan said. "I hope that it will not be the case."
Such a move would also need to be debated by the U.N. Security Council and the recent U.N. resolution on fighting terrorism did not endorse use of force beyond Afghanistan to bring terrorists to justice, he said.
Annan stressed that the phenomenon of terrorism was a threat to the entire world and said the "war" against it could ultimately be won only with a unified campaign by all countries.
"We are all confronted with a struggle against terrorism," he said. "We win the fight by cooperation among nations or we don't win it at all."
The U.N. secretary general described the unfolding situation inside Afghanistan as "very complex and very difficult" and said an international force was required there soon to help ensure stability and the delivery of humanitarian assistance there.
At his acceptance speech on Monday, Annan stressed that the horrors of war were not in the past only, citing the war in Bosnia and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, according to a BBC report.
A German-based international human rights group criticized the awarding of the prize to Annan for precisely those conflicts. It argued that Annan and the U.N. failed to do enough to prevent the genocide.
"As much as we recognize that Kofi Annan repeatedly issues general calls for the enforcement of human rights, he refused to offer help to the victims of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia," the Society for Threatened Peoples president, Tilman Zuelch, said in a statement released Sunday.
Annan has acknowledged the U.N.'s responsibility in both conflicts, saying that the United Nations failed to react to the information on an impending catastrophe in Rwanda, but that the political will was lacking in the international community to stop what would ultimately become the slaughter of some 800,000 people.
He also said the Srebrenica massacre, in which more than 7,000 men and boys were slaughtered after the Bosnian Muslim town was overrun by Serbs, would "haunt the U.N. forever."
Annan has also been criticized by the Arab American community for the U.N.'s failure to lift the 11-year-old sanctions on Iraq, which have caused the deaths of over one million people, over half of whom are children.
Annan received a less-than-warm welcome when he attended the annual convention of the American Arab Anti Discrimination Committee in Washington D.C. last year.
"The stalemate continues in Iraq, where a sanctions regime has been accused of worsening a humanitarian crisis as its unintended consequence. What is certain, and tragic, is that it has held back Iraq's development - economic, social and probably political as well. My fervent hope is that Iraq will soon decide to comply fully with Security Council resolutions, and thus open a new chapter in its relations with the international community," he said then.
His remarks that Iraq had not complied with conditions for lifting the sanctions - despite reports to the contrary by U.N. weapons inspectors, and humanitarian officials' resignations in protest to the sanctions - and his statement that the sanctions are only indirectly responsible for the suffering, were met with protests from the Arab-American audience.
In his Nobel acceptance speech in Oslo, Annan also paid tribute to Dag Hammarskjoeld, the Swedish U.N. Secretary-General who died in a plane crash and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize posthumously in 1961. Annan also saluted South Africa's Chief Albert Luthuli, the first African to win the prize, who received the award for 1960 in 1961.
"For me, as a young African beginning his career in the United Nations a few months later, those two men set a standard that I have sought to follow throughout my working life," he said.
Among those attending the ceremony at Oslo's City Hall were Norway's King Harald, Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit, as well as former Peace Prize laureates Lech Walesa, retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Rigoberta Menchu.
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