2009 Nobel Peace Prize committee for a "hideous display of cynical politics". Stuart Rees, director of the Sydney Peace Foundation in Australia, questioned the award. "Perhaps the Nobel organisation wants to give him a magic wand. I think the guy is full of promise, but I don't think the promise has been realised yet particularly in regards the Middle East." In Asia and the Middle East: Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai said that Obama was the "appropriate" person to win the Nobel Peace Prize. "His hard work and his new vision on global relations, his will and efforts for creating friendly and good relations at
2012 Nobel Peace Prize the European Union. The 1984, 1976 and 1980 laureates stated in an open letter to the Nobel Foundation, based in Sweden, that in their view the EU stood for "... security based on military force and waging wars rather than insisting on the need for an alternative approach" and that "... the Norwegian Nobel Committee has redefined and reshaped the prize in a way that is not in accordance with the law". The International Peace Bureau, which won the prize in 1910, and several peace activists, writers and lawyers also signed the letter. The signatories demanded that the Nobel Foundation