1988 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to UN peace-keeping forces; the quest for peace ... a universal undertaking.

Now 10,000 strong, the United Nations peace-keepers-soldiers from countries around the world who monitor regional trouble spots-have been awarded the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize.

Blue-helmeted troops gathered around their radios to hear the news at outposts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iran and Iraq, on the island of Cyprus, in southern Lebanon, Sinai, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, and along the India-Pakistan border.

The Nobel Committee on 29 September revealed their choice in Oslo, Norway. Thus it recognized that"the quest for peace is a universal undertaking involving all the nations and peoples of the world", as UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar told an enthusiastic General Assembly that same day.

The recent achievements of the UN have been neither sudden nor fortuitous; rather, they are the result of the persistent and dedicated work done throughout the many years of the Organization's peace-keeping activities", he said.

"The Prize is a tribute to the idealism of all those who have served the Organization, and in particular to the courage and sacrifices of all those who have contributed, and continue to contribute, to the peace-keeping operations."

General Assembly President Dante Caputo called it a tribute as well to the Secretary-General, whose intelligent and dedicated efforts have without any doubt been a vital, indeed crucial, element in the creation of this new international context which is clear to all of us".

Half a million

"Blue Helmets"

Some 500,000 persons-mostly military personnel, but also many civilians-from 58 countries throughout the world have served as UN peace-keepers since the first operation was launched in the Middle East in 1948. Currently there are just over 10,000 from 35 countries involved in seven peacekeeping operations-two of them launched since May 1988, one to help implement the Geneva Accords on Afghanistan, the other to monitor the end to hostilities in the Gulf region.

Diplomatic efforts still in progress may soon result in the dispatch of another 7,500 to monitor implementation of a settlement for the independence of Namibia, and a smaller force to Western Sahara, for which the UN recently successfully crafted a peace agreement.

The Nobel Committee said the 1988 Prize was made because the peace-keepers "represent the manifest will of the community of nations to achieve peace through negotiations, and the forces have by their presence made a decisive contribution towards the initiation of...