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President Donald Trump on Wednesday was nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize.
Christian Tybring-Gjedde, a respected member of Norway’s Parliament, said he submitted the nomination because of Trump’s tireless work in securing a peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
“It is for his contribution for peace between Israel and the UAE. It is a unique deal,” he told Reuters.
“I think he has done more trying to create peace between nations than most other Peace Prize nominees,” Tybring-Gjedde told Fox News.
Israel and the UAE agreed last month to establish full normalization of relations. Leaders of both nations said Trump played a major role in the agreement.
The UAE formally ended its boycott of Israel in late August and the first direct Israel-UAE commercial flight landed in Abu Dhabi on Aug. 31.
In the nomination letter, Tybring-Gjedde wrote that Trump and his administration helped foster the Israel-UAE deal.
“As it is expected other Middle Eastern countries will follow in the footsteps of the UAE, this agreement could be a game changer that will turn the Middle East into a region of cooperation and prosperity,” he wrote.
Trump’s role in helping facilitate contact between conflicting parties and “creating new dynamics” in other situations, including the decades-long conflict between North and South Korea, was also cited.
And the Norwegian official praised Trump for being the first U.S. president to avoid launching a new war since Jimmy Carter, who left office in 1981.
“Indeed, Trump has broken a 39-year-old streak of American presidents either starting a war or bringing the United States into an international armed conflict. The last president to avoid doing so was Peace Prize laureate Jimmy Carter,” he wrote.
READ: Jimmy Carter says supports Trump’s Iran response
Tybring-Gjedde previously nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018, the same year Japan’s prime minister reportedly submitted a nomination.
“I’m not a big Trump supporter,” he stated “The committee should look at the facts and judge him on the facts—not on the way he behaves sometimes. The people who have received the Peace Prize in recent years have done much less than Donald Trump. For example, Barack Obama did nothing.”
Obama, the U.S. president from 2009 to 2017, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, just nine months into his presidency.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee at the time said the award was in recognition of Obama’s “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
“Due to the 50 years confidentiality clause, neither the names of nominators nor of nominees may be divulged until 50 years have elapsed,” he said via email.
The 2021 award will be bestowed in October next year. This year’s award is being announced next month.
Across news outlets on Wednesday, American and foreign diplomats were saying that, if awarded to Trump, the prize is well deserved, especially after last week’s peace agreement between Kosovo and Serbia was announced.
–Wire Services
