Talk of Nobel nomination for Trump stirs backlash

TOKYO — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan moved to put the Nobel genie back in the bottle Monday when he told the country’s Parliament that he would not comment on President Trump’s surprise announcement that Abe had nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Trump’s announcement Friday, in which he boasted that Abe had given him “the most beautiful copy of a letter that he sent to the people who give out a thing called the Nobel Prize,” caused a stir in the Japanese news media and in Parliament, where Abe was questioned about the alleged nomination.

Both the Asahi Shimbun, a left-leaning daily newspaper, and the Yomiuri Shimbun, a rightleaning paper, cited anonymous Japanese government sources who said that Abe had nominated Trump for the prize last fall at the behest of the White House.

Speaking during a budget hearing Monday in Parliament, the Japa nese leader praised Trump, saying that he had “decisively responded toward North Korea’s nuclear and missile issues, and held the historic summit meeting with North Korea last year.”

Abe said he was grateful that Trump conveyed concerns about Japanese citizens being abducted by North Korea when the U.S. president met with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, in Singapore in June. “I appreciate President Trump’s leadership,” Abe said.

But as far as a Nobel Prize nomination was concerned, Abe said he could not comment, citing a Nobel committee policy of not disclosing nominees or nominations for 50 years after prizes are awarded.

Critics, taking news media reports of the nomination at face value, pounced on Abe.

Junya Ogawa, an opposition lawmaker representing the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, highlighted Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord and the nuclear agreement with Iran, his recent decision to suspend the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and his move of the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

These actions, Ogawa said, should make it “not possible to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize, and it’s shameful for Japan.”

Abe was the first world leader to visit the thenpresident elect at Trump Tower in New York after his election in November 2016, and has talked by phone or in person with Trump numerous times, always taking care to avoid any criticism of him.

While serving as host to the president in Tokyo in November 2017, Abe took the U.S. leader to play golf and gave him a hat emblazoned with the slogan “Donald & Shinzo Make Alliance Even Greater,” in reference to Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” and the long-standing alliance between the two nations.