WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama will frame the war in Afghanistan as part of a wider pursuit for peace when he accepts the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Thursday, a U.S. official said.

Obama, who departed on Air Force One on a flight to Norway on Wednesday night, has the tricky task of reconciling the peace prize with being a wartime president who only last week ordered 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan in a dramatic escalation of the U.S. war effort.

This “interesting coincidence of history” is not lost on the president, said a senior administration official who gave Reuters a preview of what Obama will say when he becomes the fourth U.S. president to receive the award.

“He is well aware there is an interesting context that he will be receiving this award roughly a week after announcing the deployment of 30,000 troops,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as Obama was still working on the estimated 20-25 minute speech.

“His approach to speeches in general is to take head-on whatever the issues are that contextualize the speech. He is not going to shy away from addressing something that is a charged topic,” the official said.

When the Nobel Committee first announced in October that Obama had won the prize, stunning the White House, some U.S. commentators saw it as a political liability for a president responsible for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Nobel Committee’s decision drew both praise and skepticism, and some polls show a majority of Americans think the prize is undeserved and premature. Critics say he has achieved few tangible gains in his nearly 11 months in office.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama will frame the war in Afghanistan as part of wider pursuit for peace when he accepts the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Thursday, a U.S. official said.

Obama, who flies to Norway on Wednesday night, has the tricky task of reconciling the peace prize with being a wartime president who only last week ordered 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan in a dramatic escalation of the U.S. war effort.

This “interesting coincidence of history” is not lost on the president, said a senior administration official who gave Reuters a preview of what Obama will say when he becomes the fourth U.S. president to receive the award.

“He is well aware there is an interesting context that he will be receiving this award roughly a week after announcing the deployment of 30,000 troops,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as Obama was still working on the estimated 20-25 minute speech.

“His approach to speeches in general is to take head-on whatever the issues are that contextualize the speech. He is not going to shy away from addressing something that is a charged topic,” the official said.

When the Nobel Committee first announced in October that Obama had won the prize, stunning the White House, some U.S. commentators saw it as a political liability for a president responsible for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Nobel Committee’s decision drew both praise and skepticism, and some polls show a majority of Americans think the prize is undeserved and premature. Critics say he has achieved few tangible gains in his nearly 11 months in office.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two leading international human rights groups gave U.S. President Barack Obama mixed reviews on his human rights record on Wednesday, a day before he is slated to accept the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International urged Obama to use his acceptance speech on Thursday to renew U.S. leadership on human rights after its position was undermined by abuses committed during the Bush administration’s war on terrorism.

In awarding Obama the Peace Prize, the Nobel Committee said in October the president had made extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation and that it hoped this would strengthen democracy and human rights.

Obama has adopted a pragmatic style of foreign policy, winning praise for showing a willingness to talk to states such as Iran and North Korea, which his predecessor George W. Bush once dubbed part of an “axis of evil” and sought to isolate.

But Amnesty and Human Rights Watch said this pragmatism had sometimes come at the expense of speaking out about human rights in countries like China, Washington’s biggest creditor and a major player in efforts to tackle the financial crisis.

“He has created a false choice between having to speak out forcefully on human rights or being pragmatic and getting results on other issues,” Amnesty International USA Executive Director Larry Cox told Reuters in an interview.

Amnesty and Human Rights Watch give Obama high marks for acting swiftly to announce the closure of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, an end to the CIA’s secret detention program, adopting a multilateral approach to diplomacy, and reaching out to the Muslim world.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama will attend the end of the Copenhagen climate change summit, a late change of plan the White House attributed on Friday to growing momentum toward a new global accord.

Obama was originally scheduled to attend the December 7-18 summit in Denmark on Wednesday before traveling to nearby Oslo to collect his Nobel Peace Prize.

Some European officials and environmentalists had expressed surprise at the initial decision, pointing out most of the hard bargaining on cutting greenhouse gas emissions would likely take place at the climax of the summit, when dozens of other world leaders are also due to attend.

“After months of diplomatic activity, there is progress being made toward a meaningful Copenhagen accord in which all countries pledge to take action against the global threat of climate change,” the White House said in a statement.

Danish officials say more than 100 world leaders have confirmed they will attend the conference, which Denmark hopes will help lay the foundation for a successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on curbing global warming gases.

“Based on his conversations with other leaders and the progress that has already been made to give momentum to negotiations, the president believes that continued U.S. leadership can be most productive through his participation at the end of the Copenhagen conference on December 18th rather than on December 9th,” the White House said.

GROWING CONSENSUS

WASHINGTON/TEHRAN (Reuters) – The United States signaled on Thursday its patience with Iran was wearing thin, saying Tehran was rapidly approaching a December deadline to accept a U.N.-brokered nuclear deal with Western powers.

Adding to the growing international pressure on Iran over its nuclear program, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said “our patience is being sorely tested” and that fresh sanctions must be considered if Iran continued to rebuff the U.N. proposal.

The warnings from Washington and Berlin came in a week in which Tehran announced plans to build 10 uranium enrichment plants in a major expansion of its atomic program and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he saw no further need for talks with the West.

Iran’s official IRNA news agency said parliament would review relations with countries that voted against Iran’s nuclear activities at the International Atomic Energy Agency last week.

The IAEA board angered Iran by censuring it for covertly building a second uranium enrichment plant near the holy city of Qom, in addition to its main IAEA-monitored one at Natanz. The nuclear watchdog called for a halt to construction.

The United States and its allies suspect Iran is secretly using its nuclear program as a cover to develop atomic weapons, a charge Iran denies. Under the U.N.-brokered deal, Iran would send the bulk of its low-enriched uranium abroad for processing and conversion into fuel for a civilian reactor.

In talks with six world powers in Geneva on October 1, Iran agreed in principle to the deal but has since balked. Iran has until the end of the year to agree to it or face the threat of tougher sanctions.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama will unveil his new strategy for the war in Afghanistan in a prime-time televised speech on Tuesday. But in the hours beforehand, officials offered a preview of what he will tell Americans, who are sharply divided over the war.

WHAT IS THE AIM OF THE NEW STRATEGY?

Much the same as the Obama administration’s first Afghanistan strategy announced last March — to dismantle, disrupt and defeat al Qaeda, the Islamist militant group that operates in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan and carried out the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

But in previewing what the president will say, a senior administration official added the word “ultimately,” as in “ultimately defeat” al Qaeda. If Obama repeats that phrase, it would be notable as it gives him some wiggle room that would allow him to pull troops out sooner rather than later.

Obama will emphasize that the goal of U.S. forces will be to prevent the return of al Qaeda to Afghanistan, reverse the momentum of the Taliban, especially in the south and east of the country, and to stop the Taliban from overthrowing the Afghan government.

U.S. troops will also help to secure key population centers, a key recommendation by Obama’s top general in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, in his August assessment that a classic counterinsurgency campaign was needed to arrest the deteriorating security situation.

U.S. forces will also accelerate training of Afghan security forces so that they can hand over control to them as soon as possible. To achieve this goal, Obama has ordered that all U.S. combat units be partnered with an Afghan unit, echoing a similar strategy by U.S. forces in Iraq.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Vice President Joe Biden pressed Iraq’s leaders in a series of telephone calls on Saturday to break a deadlock that has stalled preparations for an election seen as critical for U.S. troops to withdraw, U.S. officials said.

A senior U.S. administration official said Washington was hopeful a tentative deal on Iraq’s election law would allow a national vote to be held and for a new parliament to be elected and seated by March 15, when the term of the current assembly is due to expire.

Biden serves as President Barack Obama’s point man on Iraq.

Iraqi officials are working to secure final approval of the deal from Shi’ite Muslim, Sunni Muslim and Kurdish political factions, the administration official said. Iraq’s government is led by the country’s majority Shi’ites. The minority Sunnis had controlled Iraq before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

“The U.S. role, both on the ground and via (the) vice president, is to encourage, to bridge build, and to serve as a friendly witness to the negotiations,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Biden traveled to Iraq in September, his second trip in three months. He has sought to cajole Iraq’s feuding leaders to compromise on sticking points including the election law. He is due to visit Iraq again before the end of the year.

The White House said in a statement that Biden commended Iraqi leaders in Saturday’s telephone calls for “finding a solution to the election law impasse.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States will not be in Afghanistan eight years from now, the White House said on Wednesday, as President Barack Obama prepared to explain to Americans next week why he is expanding the war effort.

After months of deliberation and fending off Republican charges that he was dithering on Afghanistan while violence there surged, Obama will address the nation on Tuesday on the way forward in the costly and unpopular eight-year war.

He is expected to announce he is sending about 30,000 more troops as part of a new counterinsurgency strategy that will place greater emphasis on accelerating the training of Afghan security forces so that U.S. soldiers can eventually withdraw.

It appears highly unlikely Obama will offer a specific troop withdrawal timetable, but White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the president would stress that the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan was not open-ended.

“We are in year nine of our efforts in Afghanistan. We are not going to be there another eight or nine years,” Gibbs told reporters. “Our time there will be limited and that is important for people to understand,” he said.

He said Obama would use his prime-time televised speech to stress the “sheer cost” of the war, explain to Americans why their military was still in Afghanistan, and press Afghan President Hamid Karzai to improve governance after being re-elected in a fraud-tainted vote in August.

“The American people are going to want to know why we are here, they are going to want to know what our interests are,” Gibbs said.

FORT HOOD, Texas (Reuters) – President Barack Obama vowed on Tuesday to make sure the gunman who killed 13 people in a rampage at a U.S. Army base in Texas pays for his crimes.

Leading a memorial service for victims of an attack blamed on a Muslim Army psychiatrist, Obama reminded Americans they were enduring “trying times” while fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but said there was no justification for what he called an “incomprehensible” tragedy.

“No faith justifies these murderous and craven acts. No just and loving God looks upon them with favor,” Obama told a crowd of 15,000, many of them soldiers in camouflage, on a parade ground outside Fort Hood’s headquarters.

“And for what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice — in this world, and the next.”

The shootings marked the latest blow to a U.S. military under strain from its combat duties as Obama weighs sending thousands more troops to the increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan even as he winds down America’s role in Iraq.

The somber ceremony came amid questions about whether authorities missed warning signs about the alleged gunman, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who spent years counseling severely wounded soldiers and was soon to be deployed to Afghanistan.

Relatives have said Hasan, who is of Palestinian descent, wanted to leave the Army to avoid being sent to Afghanistan and was harassed by fellow soldiers because of his religion. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have stoked anti-U.S. sentiment among many Muslims worldwide.

FORT HOOD, Texas (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s deliberations over war strategy in Afghanistan have narrowed to four options but a decision is still weeks away, the White House said on Tuesday.

“The president will have an opportunity to discuss four options with his national security team tomorrow,” Obama’s spokesman, Robert Gibbs, told reporters aboard Air Force One.

He declined to say what they were.

Officials described Wednesday’s White House meeting, which will bring together Obama’s top military and civilian advisers, as critical to a decision after two months of deliberations.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said Obama was considering options that included sending roughly 15,000, 30,000 or 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan to try to stem Taliban gains.

Currently, there are nearly 68,000 U.S. troops and 40,000 allied forces in Afghanistan.

“Anybody who tells you the president has made a decision … doesn’t have, in all honesty, the slightest idea what they are talking about. The president has yet to make a decision,” Gibbs said en route to a memorial service at an Army base in Texas where 13 people were shot dead by a gunman last week.