Oslo, Nov. 15: Several countries remain hesitant about whether to attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony next month, the Nobel Institute said on Monday, after Beijing sent out warnings against honouring this year’s laureate, Mr Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese dissident.
“Several (ambassadors) have asked us to push back the deadline” for responding to the invitation to the Nobel ceremony in Oslo on December 10, the Nobel Institute director, Mr Geir Lundestad, said.
As each year, the Institute has invited all Oslo-based ambassadors to attend the ceremony, and the diplomats had until November 15 to say whether or not they would come.
“Some are still waiting for instructions from authorities in their home countries,” Mr Lundestad said, refusing to reveal which countries were still hesitating. The list of participants should be clearer by Thursday, he said, adding that the final list might not be made public. Mr Liu, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison last December for subversion for co-authoring a manifesto calling for political reform in China, won the Nobel Peace Prize — enraging China’s rulers.
Beijing has threatened there will be “consequences” for countries that support the dissident. The Chinese embassy in Oslo sent a letter to other countries’ missions in the city requesting that they refrain from attending the ceremony.
Despite the warning, most Western countries, including the US, Britain, France and Germany have already said they will attend. With Mr Liu in prison and his wife Ms Liu Xia under house arrest and his two brothers not sure of being able to leave China, 2010 may mark the first time in the Nobel Prize’s 109-year-history that neither the laureate nor a representative will show up to receive the award.