Families of the three IDF soldiers kidnapped last year by the Hizbullah voiced strong objections to the selection of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the United Nations as recipients of this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Charging that the selection of the UN was a "shameful disgrace" due to the organization's role in hiding and covering-up evidence and videotapes connected to the kidnapping, the families said they would seek legal assistance to appeal against the decision.

"This is a serious and cynical mistake," said Haim Avraham, father of Staff-Sgt. Benny Avraham. "The founder of the Nobel Peace Prize must be turning in his grave," he said. Avraham charged that Annan's activities concerning the kidnapped soldiers were not presented to the award selection committee.

"The United Nations continues to hide evidence and what it knows about the kidnapping," he said. In addition, Avraham claims that Annan lied to family members when they met with him in New York.

Yaakov Avitan, father of Staff-Sgt. Adi Avitan, claims it was a "disgrace to give a prestigious award to an organization that cooperates in the field with terrorists with no conscience." Avitan holds Annan personally responsible for the UN's "white-washing, withholding evidence and preventing Israel and the families from receiving vital information" including the results of DNA testing performed to determine whose blood was on the items recovered from the site of the kidnapping. "All of these activities, of the UN and of Kofi Annan, are none other than efforts to give aid to a terrorist organization and not peace efforts," he said.

Avitan said the families would intensify their efforts to free their sons and would hold additional protest demonstrations against the United Nations. A solidarity rally for the kidnapped soldiers is planned for this evening in Eilat.

UN cited for efforts to achieve world peace and security
The United Nations and its Secretary-General Kofi Annan won this year's Nobel Peace Prize for "their work for a better organized and more peaceful world." The Nobel committee cited the United Nations for being at the forefront of efforts to achieve peace and security in the world. Annan, who has devoted almost his entire working life to the world body, was lauded for "bringing new life to the organization.''

"The world is a messy place, and unfortunately the messier it gets, the more work we have to do,'' Annan said after Friday morning's announcement that the Peace Prize had been awarded to him and the United Nations as a whole.

Foreign Affairs Minister Shimon Peres, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 with former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, praised Annan as a man with a humanitarian approach who "really worries about the poor of the world'' and is "changing the face of the UN." Peres claimed that Annan's regard for Israel was positive, despite the criticism over his role in the kidnapping of the IDF soldiers.

"Does he (Peres) live in a bubble?" asked Avitan after hearing the Foreign Minister's comments. "Why doesn't he relate to the UN's activities in this matter? Why doesn't he emphasize that the UN cooperated with the Hizbullah?" Avitan said Peres should have objected to the selection of the United Nations and Kofi Annan as prize recipients and should have demanded instead their intervention to "bring the soldiers home."

The Nobel Prize selection was also denounced in the Knesset. MK Zeev Boim (Likud) called the award "a miserable decision" that further tarnished a noble institution. Boim said: "The name of the prize should be changed from the Nobel Peace Prize to the Nobel Prize for collaborating with terror."

MK Michael Kleiner (Herut) said that the prestige of the Nobel Peace Prize had already been fatally damaged when it was awarded to "a terrorist like Arafat, and now it is being compromised again by granting it to Kofi Annan, who acted in a irresponsible and non-humanitarian manner regarding the videotape of the kidnapped soldiers on the Lebanese border."

Worldwide praise and criticism of UN award
"No one and no organization is more deserving of this prestigious award," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair. U.S. President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell telephoned Annan to offer their congratulations. "As a son of Ghana, you've made the whole nation proud," Ghanaian President John Kufuor said.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat welcomed the Nobel committee's choice, saying he hoped the world body would ''gather the necessary strength'' to end Israeli occupation and establish a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

But harsh criticism of the selection came from Bosnia and Rwanda, where survivors of civil wars criticized Annan and the United Nations for a succession of shortcomings in its failure to halt Rwanda's 1994 genocide -- when Annan was head of U.N. peacekeeping -- and the mass slaughter of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995.

"He has a heavy responsibility in the Rwandan genocide," said Antoine Mugesera, chairman of a Rwandan association of genocide survivors. "How can such a highly respected institution award him the prize?"

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