JAPANESE Prime Minister Shinzo Abe nominated U.S. President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize last autumn after receiving a request from the U.S. Government to do so, the Asahi newspaper reported yesterday.

The report follows Trump’s claim Friday that Abe had nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize for opening talks and easing tensions with North Korea.

The U.S. Government had sounded Abe out over the Noble Peace Prize nomination after Trump’s summit in June last year with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the first meeting between a North Korean leader and a sitting U.S. president, the Asahi said, citing an unnamed Japanese Government source.

A spokesman for Japan’s Foreign Ministry in Tokyo said the ministry was aware of Trump’s remarks, but “would refrain from commenting on the interaction between the two leaders.”

The Nobel Foundation’s website says a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize may be submitted by any person who meets the nomination criteria, which includes current heads of states. Under the foundation’s rules, names and other information about unsuccessful nominations cannot be disclosed for 50 years.

The Japanese leader had given him “the most beautiful copy” of a five-page nomination letter, Trump made the assertion during a press conference at the White House on Friday in response to a question about his expectations of a second summit with Kim, the North Korean leader, in Vietnam in late February.

Abe gave him “the most beautiful copy of a letter that he sent to the people who give out a thing called the Nobel Prize,” Trump said. “He said, ‘I have nominated you, respectfully, on behalf of Japan. I am asking them to give you the Nobel Peace Prize.’”

Trump said that his early interactions with the North Korean leader had been filled with “fire and fury,” but that the two leaders had got past that stage and had developed a good relationship since their initial summit in Singapore last year.

“I like him a lot and he likes me a lot,” he said.

He said that Abe nominated him for the Nobel in a five-page letter because he was concerned about North Korea launching missiles over Japanese territory. North Korea has not carried out a test of a missile since a Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile was launched in November 2017, while its most recent underground nuclear test was in September 2017.

“Now, all of a sudden, they feel good,” Trump said. “They feel safe. I did that.”

He added that the administration of former President Barack Obama “couldn’t have done that” and criticized his predecessor in the White House, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for underlining Washington’s commitment to “the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”

Trump said Obama had been president for “about 15 seconds” before he was awarded the prize.

“I’ll never get it, but that’s OK,” he said. “They gave it to Obama. He didn’t even know what he got it for.”

(SD-Agencies)