U.N. Chief Accepts Nobel Prize Awarded to Peacekeeping Troops

Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of U.N. peacekeeping troops Saturday and said their success illustrates a new mood of understanding and common sense in the world.

But Perez de Cuellar also said the peacekeepers’ crucial mission is threatened because the United States and other nations don’t pay their dues to the world body.

“Never before in history have military forces been employed internationally not to wage war, not to establish domination and not to serve the interests of any power or group of powers but rather to prevent conflict between peoples,” he told an audience that included Norway’s King Olav V.

‘New Mood of Understanding’

Despite conflicts and terrible new weapons, “collective responsibility for peace can be evolved in a truly representative international system,” Perez de Cuellar said. “There is a new mood of understanding and common sense.”

His hands appeared to shake with emotion as he accepted the gold medal and prize certificate from Egil Aarvik, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. The peacekeeping forces are the first military force to win the award.

At the traditional ceremony awarding the 1988 laurels, Aarvik said the committee chose the peacekeeping forces for their “unselfish contribution.”

The first U.N. force went to the Middle East in 1948. Since then, half a million soldiers from 58 countries have served in trouble spots around the world, keeping combatants apart and monitoring cease-fires.

An audience of 600 at Oslo University observed a moment of silence for the 733 peacekeepers who have died on duty.

Flanked by nine blue-capped U.N. soldiers while accepting the award, Perez de Cueller made special mention of U.S. Lt. Col. William R. Higgins, who was heading a U.N. observer team when he was abducted last Feb. 17 about 45 miles south of Beirut.

“You are also honoring the soldiers of peace, 733 Blue Helmets (who) have given their lives in the service of peace,” Perez de Cuellar said. “One of them, Lt. Col. Higgins, is still in the hands of his kidnapers. I take this opportunity to appeal once again for his immediate release.”

The most visible of the world body’s peacekeeping forces, the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, was deployed in southern Lebanon in 1978 to maintain peace after an Israeli invasion in retaliation for a series of attacks by Palestinian guerrillas.

On Friday, Perez de Cuellar accepted the money portion of the award, worth about $400,000, but said peacekeeping forces are threatened by the failure of the United States and other countries to pay their U.N. dues.

“I don’t know how we’re going to cope financially,” he told reporters. U.N. members owe about $450 million in back dues, and the United States is the biggest debtor with nearly $350 million outstanding, he said.

The Reagan Administration has been holding back money from the world body on grounds that it is overstaffed, wasteful and has an anti-Western bias.

Meanwhile, in a white-tie ceremony in Stockholm, five Americans shared the other Nobels with three West Germans, a Briton and a Frenchman.

Literature laureate Naguib Mahfouz of Egypt could not attend for health reasons.

Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf awarded the prize for physics to Americans Leon M. Lederman, Melvin Schwartz of Mountain View, Calif., and Jack Steinberger.

Johann Diesenhofer, Robert Huber and Hartmut Michel, all West Germans, received the chemistry award.

Sir James Black of Britain shared the medicine prize with Gertrude B. Elion and George H. Hitchings, both of the United States. Maurice Allais of France won the memorial prize in economics.

This year’s prizes are worth $416,000 per category.

For reasons never explained, Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel stipulated in his will that the Peace Prize be awarded in Norway and the other prizes in Sweden.

The first prizes were handed out in 1901, and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics was set up in 1968.

All of the awards are made Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896.