POLICE AND PROTESTERS GEAR UP FOR PRESIDENT OBAMAS VISIT

Agencies
OSLO

Although he doesnt show up at the Copenhagen climate talks until next week, US President Barack Obama wont be far from global warming issues when he lands in Oslo Thursday to collect his contentious Nobel Peace Prize.Greenpeace activists said they had laid out the message ""Obama our climate, your decision"" in enormous cloth letters covering an area 150 meter by 50 meter in an empty field next to Oslos Gardermoen Airport.

""This is our message and we want to send it most importantly to the President himself,"" Greenpeace spokeswoman Bente Myhre Haast said, adding that she hopes it will be visible from Obamas flight path.
On the sidewalks near Oslos lavish Grand Hotel, where Obama will stay, activists sprayed similar slogans on the pavement - from ""you won it, now earn it"" to ""change the politics, save the climate.""

The Norwegian committee that awards the Nobel Peace Prize said it chose Obama for, among other achievements, bringing the US into the fight against global warming and for supporting multilateral diplomacy.

But Greenpeace and other environmental groups dispute the decision, saying Obama hasnt done enough to combat climate change.Anti-war activists, meanwhile, contend that Obamas decision to increase troop levels in Afghanistan by 30,000 soldiers made a mockery of awarding the President a prize whose mandate includes honoring those who work for ""the abolition or reduction of standing armies.""Its been a decade since a sitting US president visited Norway, and

Norwegian anti-war and climate change activists both say they plan to use this rare occasion to make sure the president hears them.On the anti-war front, Benjamin Endre Larsen - leader of Norways Peace Initiative and a protest organizer - estimated that about 5,000 people will turn out on Thursday to voice their dissent from Obamas strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Meanwhile in Washington, the White House said on Monday that Obama will not shirk from mentioning Afghanistan and his decision to send more troops to the war zone when he accepts the Nobel Peace Prize this week..

Acknowledging the irony of a wartime president winning a peace prize, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama would address this ""juxtaposition"" in his acceptance speech in the Norwegian capital Oslo on Thursday.When it was announced in October that Obama had won the prize, the President made clear that while he was deeply humbled by the award, he was still the commander in chief of a country at war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

With all the attention Obamas visit has generated, about 2,500 police officers from all over the Nordic country have deployed to Oslo. The Norwegian military has also contributed support in the form of helicopters and sharpshooters.