Nobel Peace Prize Goes to U.N. Peacekeepers

The Nobel Committee today awarded the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize to the blue-bereted U.N. peacekeeping forces patrolling the front lines of the world’s trouble spots.

The committee cited the troops for building a confidence in the United Nations that allows it to play a growing role in global affairs, and for reducing warfare.

Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar, who will accept the prize in the name of the 500,000 troops from 58 countries who have served since 1948, said “the Nobel Committee recognizes that the quest for peace is a universal undertaking involving all the nations and peoples of the world.”

Reagan, Gorbachev Considered

Committee Chairman Egil Aarvik said President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev had been “seriously considered” for the prize.

He did not explain the committee’s decision but indicated the presidential election may have been a factor. “Everything was taken into consideration,” he said.

Reagan congratulated the U.N. peacekeeping forces for receiving the prize and said he wasn’t disappointed.

“No, I didn’t deserve it as much (as they did),” Reagan said when asked by reporters asking about the decision.

Nearly 10,000 peacekeepers from more than 30 countries currently serve under the U.N. flag from the Middle East to the Indian subcontinent. Peacekeepers most recently were dispatched to Iran and Iraq under a cease-fire negotiated in the countries’ eight-year-long war.

The decision was widely regarded as an indirect award to Perez de Cuellar, who scored diplomatic breakthroughs this year in mediating the Iran-Iraq cease-fire, a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and progress in talks on Southwest Africa.

Aarvik told reporters he hoped the award would “give the U.N. and the forces increased prestige.”

The image of the United Nations has recently been enhanced by its role in the recent cease-fires and peace talks, although it suffers financial problems. However, the United States has said it will pay $188 million of the money it owes the world body.

The five-member Nobel committee praised the forces in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Syria, Cyprus, the subcontinent, and Iran and Iraq for subduing tensions where armistices have substituted for peace.

The citation said the peacekeepers “have played a significant role in reducing the level of conflict even though the fundamental causes of the struggles frequently remain.”

It was the fifth time that a U.N.-related body won the coveted prize since it was first awarded in 1901 from the estate of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.

It was the 16th time that an organization rather than a person was named the Peace Prize laureate.

The first U.N. troops were sent to monitor the armistice between Israel and the Arab states in 1948. Today, most U.N. forces are stationed in the Middle East.

Lebanese Unit Cited

The committee singled out the U.N. Interim Forces in Lebanon, which has suffered more than 200 casualties since it was sent to Lebanon’s southern border region with Israel in 1978.

U.S. Marine Lt. Col. William R. Higgins, who headed a 76-member U.N. observer group in south Lebanon attached to UNIFIL, is one of nine American hostages in Lebanon. Higgins, 43, was seized Feb. 17.

The peace prize is the first this year to be announced of the six annual Nobel Prizes. The others for literature, medicine, chemistry, physics and economics will be announced next month in Stockholm, the Swedish capital.

Each prize carries a cash award of 2.5 million Swedish kronor, or $390,000 at today’s rate. It is divided among the winners.