Alone in Oslo

Begin takes a peaceless prize

The ceremony had been planned as a duet, but it came off as more of a solo. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat felt there was no point in going to Oslo to collect his half of this year's $173,700 Nobel Peace Prize. Instead, he sent an aide and confidant, Sayed Marei, a former Speaker of Egypt's parliament. The cause of Sadat's disenchantment: the Middle East peace treaty negotiations begun at Camp David were still stalled over two issues. One was Israel's insistence that the pact should take precedence, in time of conflict, over Egypt's obligations to other Arab countries. The more nagging question was Sadat's demand for linkage of the treaty and the proposed negotiations over the future of the West Bank and Gaza, linkage that he and President Carter believed Israeli Premier Menachem Begin had agreed to at the Camp David summit.

Unable to resolve either problem by an exchange of letters with his Nobel co-laureate, Sadat warned that the negotiations could not be wound up by the Dec. 17 deadline set in the Camp David agreement. Concerned about the deteriorating situation, the White House announced that Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who was scheduled to attend NATO talks in Brussels this week, would fly instead to Cairo and Jerusalem. Vance, said State Department Spokesman George Sherman, would "explore ways of resuming the discussions" with Sadat and Begin.

Meanwhile, members of his own Likud coalition begged Begin not to go to Oslo. As Israeli Newspaper Columnist Amos Keinan put it, Begin's attendance at a peace celebration without a peace was "like celebrating the brith mila [Jewish circumcision ritual] while the baby is not yet born."

Unmoved, Begin flew to the Norwegian capital late last week to receive his commemorative gold medal from Mrs. Aage Lionaes, head of the peace prize committee, in the high-walled medieval Akershus. In his acceptance speech, Begin quoted the prophets Isaiah and Micah ("And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. . ."). He then rhetorically posed an issue that bedevils everyone concerned with the 30-year-old Middle East struggle: "not whether, but when this vision [of peace] will become a reality." Begin did not give a definite answer. Instead, he acknowledged an intellectual debt to Giuseppe Garibaldi. The Italian revolutionary hero, said Begin, taught freedom fighters to "work for peace because there is no mission in life more sacred."

Begin's speech was delivered under the most extraordinary security precautions Norway had seen in recent memory. An estimated 2,000 policemen were deployed around Oslo; Begin was ferried to the Akershus by helicopter and bulletproof limousine. Even the location of the ceremony was a concession to police precautions. Heretofore, the Nobel award has always been bestowed at Oslo University's marble-clad Festival Hall. Security experts feared the hall offered too many opportunities to terrorists. In changing the venue, Begin's guardians unconsciously added an element of historical irony to this year's ceremony. The 14th century Akershus served during World War II as headquarters for that quintessential Nazi collaborator and anti-Semite, Vidkun Quisling.

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