United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the winner in 2001, tread lightly, but unmistakeably, in his criticism of US foreign policy, suggesting that it would "not be wise" to attack Iraq.

Bush-bashing became more explicit in 2002, when Jimmy Carter won the prize, a decision which Nobel committee chairman Gunnar Berge said "can and must be interpreted as a criticism of the position of the administration currently sitting in the US towards Iraq".

Wednesday it was the turn of Iranian human rights lawyer Ebadi to take a swipe at the United States.

"In the past two years, some states have violated the universal principles and laws of human rights by using the events of September 11 and the war on international terrorism as a pretext," Ebadi said in her acceptance speech, without, however, mentioning the United States by name.

Nobel-watchers said there may be well be an anti-Bush pattern emerging around the peace prize.

"This is indeed becoming a trend", said Stein Toennesson, head of the Oslo Peace Research Institue (PRIO) said.

He added, however, that the Nobel jury probably did not intend this outcome in their most recent choice.

"The idea was to reward Ebadi for her fight in favour of women and children," he told AFP.

Ebadi may even have played a tactical game, Toennesson suspects, seeking to prove to the extremist forces in Iran that she was not, as they allege, serving Western interests.

Her criticism of the continued detention of prisoners in the US military base in Guantanamo would go in the same direction.

"I think Ebadi's main intention was not to appear as a puppet of the United States," Toennesson said, who noted that Ebadi's comments on rights abuses by the Iranian government were relatively muted.

Espen Barth Eide, researcher at the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs (NUPI) concurred.

"As a moderate Muslim, she has to show her fellow citizens that she is not close to the Americans," he said.

"People in Iran feel that the United States wants them to change. Ebadi and the moderates also want change in favour of more tolerance and more democracy. It is therefore important for her to mark the difference," he said.

Ebadi's allegations of Western double standards in applying United Nations resolutions in the Middle East would also have been designed to curry favour in Islamist circles, experts said.

Ebadi said in her speech that Iraq's refusal to respect UN resolutions provoked two wars in 12 years, while Israel continues to occupy Palestinian territory with impunity after 35 years, despite several resolutions calling for its withdrawal.

But just because criticism of Bush has become something of a tradition, the Nobel Peace Prize is not actually anti-American, said Barth Eide, citing the prize award to Carter, who is, after all, a former US president.

"The Bush administration's policies are almost systematically out of sync with international law," which is of prime importance to the Nobel jury, he said.

All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

Quick Links
SpaceWar
Search SpaceWar
Subscribe To SpaceWar Express

SpaceWar Search Engine

SUBSCRIBE TO THE SPACEWAR NEWSLETTER SubscribeUnsubscribe