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Vaclav Havel takes on Obama for skipping Dalai Lama

By Leos Rousek | The Wall Street Journal

Former Czech President Vaclav Havel speaks during The Forum 2000 Foundation conference in Prague on 11 October 2009.The Forum 2000 Foundation

Monday, former Czech President Vaclav Havel, a several time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, have joined leaders and luminaries world over to comment on the last week’s surprise decision by the Nobel Committee to award the Nobel Peace Prize to US President Barack Obama.

Without saying so directly, the Czech playwright and former dissident criticised the fresh Nobel Peace Prize laureate for failing to live up to the award’s status.

Employing his symbolic literary language Mr Havel chastised President Obama, referring to him as “the fresh holder of the Nobel Peace Prize,” for allegedly putting off meeting with the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader, until after the US-China Summit.

“When the fresh holder of the Nobel Peace delays his meeting with the Dalai Lama until after he has visited the continental China, then he makes a small, tiny and little obvious compromise. The question is if great and fateful compromises don’t have their preludes, early beginnings, first undercurrents in such small [compromises],” Havel said during his opening speech at the Forum 2000, an annual conference on global and humanity issues that the former Czech President co-founded with Japanese philanthropist Yohei Sasakawa and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel.

Copyright © 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

Published in The Wall Street Journal