Jimmy Carter says Donald Trump could win Nobel Peace Prize for North Korea peace efforts

The 39th president also said the 45th sometimes did not tell the truth

Andrew Buncombe
New York
Tuesday 22 May 2018 15:47 BST
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Donald Trump reveals time and place for meeting with North Korea's Kim Jong Un

Jimmy Carter has said Donald Trump ought to receive the Nobel Peace Prize if has has a successful meeting with Kim Kong-un and manages to lower decades-old tensions on the Korean peninsula.

While the 93-year-old has on several occasions criticised Mr Trump’s actions, he said if the president were able to pull off a peace deal, it would be an achievement none of his predecessors had managed.

“If President Trump is successful in getting a peace treaty that’s acceptable to both sides with North Korea, I think he certainly ought to be considered for the Nobel Peace Prize,” he said.

“I think it would be a worthy and a momentous accomplishment that no previous president has been able to realise.”

Mr Carter, himself a Nobel laureate, made history as the first former US president to visit North Korea in June 1994. His unofficial four-day visit included a meeting with then-North Korean leader Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of current leader. His intervention headed off a potential conflict and helped seal an aid-for-disarmament agreement that lasted for the best part of a decade.

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Mr Trump is among those who appears to think he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for his planned summit with Mr Kim in Singapore on June 12, a point of view shared by South Korean president Moon Jae-in and UKIP MEP Nigel Farage.

Earlier this month, Mr Trump said: “Everyone thinks so, but I would never say it.”

Speaking to Politico, Mr Carter said while he believed Mr Trump might be worthy of the Nobel prize for his endeavours on North Korea, he continued to disagree with his decision to withdraw the US from the Iran nuclear deal.

He also accused the president of sometimes failing to tell the truth.

“I think the president ought to tell the truth. I think the president ought to be for peace,” he said. “I think the president ought to treat everybody equally. So, equality and peace and the truth, and I’d say basic justice are some of the moral values that I think every person should have.”

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