Thaindian News

New York, Dec 7 (IANS) India will attend the ceremony to confer the Nobel Peace Prize on imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo Dec 10 at Oslo, even though China has asked the world leaders to boycott the event, a media report said Tuesday.

In a statement on its website, the Norwegian Peace Prize committee said that as of Monday, 44 embassies in Oslo, the Norwegian capital, had signalled their intention to send a representative to the ceremony, the New York Times reported.

But the number of the countries which, for various reasons, declined the invitation, had risen to 19 from six three weeks ago, the website said.

Invitations to the ceremony are routinely sent only to those 65 countries with embassies in Oslo, Geir Lundestad, the committee’s secretary, said.

Those who accepted included “all the western countries” along with representatives from other countries including India, Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa, South Korea and Japan, he said.

Lundestad said there had been reports suggesting that the prize might be handed over to people other than Liu’s close family, but that was not the case. “We assume that no close family will be coming,” he said. “But if someone surfaces, we can change very quickly.”

Those countries which are not taking part in the ceremony include China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Serbia, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Sudan, Ukraine, Cuba and Morocco.

The prize committee has said that for the first time since 1936, the medal and diploma that accompany the prize will not be handed over because neither Liu, who is serving an 11-year sentence for subversionin, nor members of his family have been permitted to travel to Oslo to receive these.

Liu’s wife, Liu Xia, has been held incommunicado since the award was announced in October and the government has been waging an offensive to rebrand the prize as a Western ploy to undermine the Chinese Communist Party’s hold on power, the report said.