In its announcement, the Norwegian Nobel Committee hailed Obama’s “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”. Was the Nobel committee’s decision to award Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize well-deserved or overly premature? Opinions from around the world:

Couldn’t have been better

Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency and 2005 laureate, said: “I cannot think of anyone today more deserving of this honour. In less than a year in office, he has transformed the way we look at ourselves and the world we live in.”

Another laureate, Israeli President Shimon Peres, sent a letter to Obama on Friday, saying: “You provided the entire humanity with fresh hope, with intellectual determination, and a feeling that there is a lord in heaven and believers on earth.”

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon offered his wholehearted congratulations. “President Obama embodies the new spirit of dialogue and engagement on the world’s biggest problems.”

Chief Palestinian peace negotiator in West Asia, Saeb Erekat, said: “We hope that he will be able to achieve peace in the Middle East,” he said.

South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a 1984 laureate, hailed the award as “a magnificent endorsement for the first African-American President in history.”

That’s great, but...

Nils Butenschon, director of the Norwegian Center for Human Rights at the University of Oslo and a well-known human rights champion in Norway said: “I think the committee should be very careful with the integrity of the prize, and in this case I don’t think we are in a position to really evaluate the full impact of what this candidate has achieved.”

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