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Foreign minister to discuss Norway's role in promoting peace during Oct. 24 address

Nancy J. Ashmore
October 21, 2002

As the daily headlines attest, it is not at all difficult to find people preparing for, prosecuting or advocating the forceful resolution of conflicts of various sorts -- they live everywhere from Afghanistan and Bali to Bosnia, North Korea and the United States. This week, however, members of the St. Olaf and Northfield communities have the opportunity to hear from the foreign minister of a nation that has been noted for its efforts to promote peaceful solutions to conflict.

At 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 24, in Viking Theater, Buntrock Commons, Norwegian Foreign Minister Jan Petersen will deliver an address on "Norway, a Peace-Promoting Country." It is free and open to the public.

Petersen, a member of the Norwegian Parliament since 1981, became Norway's foreign minister last October. From 1988 to 2001, he was a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, where he headed the Norwegian delegation and served as chair of the Political Committee. He is the leader of Norway's Conservative Party.

Accompanying Petersen during his visit to St. Olaf will be his wife and Norwegian Ambassador to the United States Knut Vollebaek and his wife. Vollebaek has himself served as the foreign minister of Norway and, as head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation, played a key negotiating role during the war in Kosovo.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee is responsible each year for selecting the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace, to be awarded this year to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter for his "decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights and to promote economic and social development."

The nation of Norway has contributed many times to similar efforts. The agreement signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in September 1993 is known informally as the "Oslo Accords" in acknowledgment of the role played by Norway in facilitating the negotiations. Norway has, moreover, regularly committed personnel to United Nations Peacekeeping Operations, most recently to missions in Sierra Leone, Kosovo and East Timor.

Norway is also currently one of the ten elected members of the U.N. Security Council, which may soon be considering a U.S. resolution calling for tougher weapons inspections in Iraq. That group meets on an almost daily basis in "The Norwegian Room" -- donated by the Norwegian Government to U.N. headquarters in New York.

Contact Nancy J. Ashmore at 507-786-3315 or ashmore@stolaf.edu.