WASHINGTON — President Trump has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for a second time this week — this time for brokering a historic peace deal between Serbia and breakaway republic Kosovo.
In a Friday morning tweet, Magnus Jacobsson, a member of the Swedish Parliament, announced he was nominating the Trump administration and the two European nations for their “joint work for peace and economic development, through the cooperation agreement signed in the White House.”
“Trade and communications are important building blocks for peace,” Jacobsson wrote, sharing his letter to the Nobel Committee.
On Wednesday, the president was nominated for the prestigious award by a member of the Norwegian Parliament for helping broker a peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
“For his merit, I think he has done more trying to create peace between nations than most other Peace Prize nominees,” Christian Tybring-Gjedde told Fox News.
According to the official Nobel website, there were 318 candidates for the 2020 Peace Prize. The winner of the prize for 2021 will not be announced until October of next year.
Trump last Friday hosted the leaders of Serbia and Kosovo to sign a landmark economic normalization agreement.
Kosovo split from Serbia in 2008, declaring independence with US assistance following a genocidal war waged by then-Serbian strongman Slobodan Milošević which killed 10,000 Muslim ethnic Albanians.
“It took decades because you didn’t have anybody trying to get it done,” Trump said in the Oval Office, flanked by Kosovo Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti and Serbia President Aleksandar Vučić.
“There was a lot of fighting and now there’s a lot of love,” he continued.
Serbia still does not recognize Kosovo’s independence but it allows economic cooperation, rail and transit links, and the free movement of people and goods between the two countries.
The Serbian president praised Trump and said he had done a “great job,” while Kosovo’s leader hailed Trump’s “commitment to peace.”
The deal came on the heels of another agreement brokered a peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates — the first normalization of relations between Israel and an Arab nation in decades.
The agreement, known as the Abraham Accords, will be officially signed at the White House next Tuesday with delegations from Israel and the UAE.
The diplomatic breakthrough will see increased tourism and investment between the two nations in a move that angered Iran.
On Friday afternoon, the White House announced that the tiny kingdom of Bahrain would follow the UAE in normalizing relations with Israel as the Trump administration pushes for peace in the Middle East.
“When I took office, the Middle East was in a state of absolute chaos,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
“As more countries normalize relations with Israel, which will happen quite quickly, we believe, the region will become more and more stable, secure and prosperous,” he said.
Barack Obama was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, his first year in office, for his work in easing tensions with the Muslim world after 9/11 and helping rid of the world of nuclear weapons.
The committee’s decision shocked many, including Obama himself.
The committee’s ex-secretary in a 2015 interview said that it had been a mistake and revealed the award did not bolster Obama as they had hoped.
“Even many of Obama’s supporters believed that the prize was a mistake,” Geir Lundestad said. “In that sense the committee didn’t achieve what it had hoped for.”
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