"Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to US President Barack Obama in 2009 failed to achieve what the committee hoped it would, its ex-secretary has said.
"Geir Lundestad told the AP news agency that the committee hoped the award would strengthen Mr Obama.
"Instead, the decision was met with criticism in the US. Many argued he had not had any impact worthy of the award.
"Mr Lundestad, writing in his memoir, Secretary of Peace, said even Mr Obama himself had been surprised.
""No Nobel Peace Prize ever elicited more attention than the 2009 prize to Barack Obama," Mr Lundestad writes.
"Even many of Obama's supporters believed that the prize was a mistake," he says. "In that sense the committee didn't achieve what it had hoped for". . . .
Another Nobel winner was PLO chairman Yasser Arafat:
In an amusing anecdote, Mr Lundestad relates how he found Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who won the award in 1994, watching an episode of the Tom and Jerry cartoon in his hotel with other Palestine Liberation Organisation members. "It was made very clear that they intended to watch until the end," he said.
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