3 peace laureates protest EU’s prize

— Three Nobel Peace Prize laureates, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have contested the awarding of this year’s prize to the European Union, saying the 27-nation bloc contradicts the values associated with the prize because it relies on military force to ensure security.

In an open letter to the Nobel Foundation, Tutu of South Africa, Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland and Adolfo Perez Esquivel from Argentina demanded that the prize money of about $1.2 million not be paid out this year.

The EU “clearly is not one of ‘the champions of peace’ Alfred Nobel had in mind” when he created the prize by including it in his will in 1895, they wrote in the letter, a copy of which was acquired Friday by The Associated Press. “We ask the board of the foundation to clarify that it cannot and will not pay the prize from its funds.”

They said the EU condones “security based on military force and waging wars rather than insisting on the need for an alternative approach.”

Tutu won the prize in 1984 for his nonviolent struggle against apartheid. Maguire was cited for seeking a peaceful resolution to the troubles in Northern Ireland in 1976, while the 1980 winner Esquivel was honored for work in advancing human rights in Argentina.

Front Section, Pages 8 on 12/01/2012

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