OSLO, Sept 29, Reuter: United Nations peacekeeping forces won the 1988 Nobel Prize on Thursday, a choice designed to boost the soldier’s authority and the World Body’s prestige.

United Nations Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, who will formally receive the 388,000 dollar prize in Oslo on December 10, hailed the award as “one of the most brilliant decisions taken by the committee of the noble prize.”

He said that 733 of the blue helmeted soldier’s had died policing world flashpoints and conflict zones.

The troops seldom carry more than side arms and must be threatened or shot at before they may fight back.

“The award is a tribute to the idealism of all who have served this organization and in particular to the velour and sacrifice of those who have contributed and continue and contribute to our peacekeeping operations,” he said.

Nobel committee spokesman Egil Aarvik told an Oslo news conference the award was meant to strengthen the authority of the peacekeepers and of the world body as a whole.

“We want to give more prestige to these forces and through them to the United Nations,” he said. The United Nations and several of its agencies had been tipped for the prize in a year in which the whole body, once criticized as a cockpit of third world radicalism and bureaucratic waste, has done much to transform its image.

The prize, established by Swedish dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel along with awards for Medicine, Physics, Chemistry and Literature, was first awarded in 1901.

Peacekeeping troops around the world welcomed the news as a vindication of their task.

“It’s good for the soldier’s to see the world is recognizing them,” said Lieutenant Wadsworth of Calgary, Alberta, a Canadian with the U.N. peacekeeping force in Cyprus.

The Israeli foreign ministry said in a statement: “Even more than a prize for existing achievements. This is a testimony of the yearning for peace and understanding between peoples.”

There are currently seven groups of U.N. peacekeepers on duty, numbering about 10,000 troops. But peacekeeping operations face a financial threat. Finland, which has contributed troops to all existing U.N. Forces, called earlier this week for peacekeeping activities to be put on a secure financial and political basis.

Foreign Minister Kalevi Sorsa told the U.N. General Assembly: “We have seen that the United Nations troops too often have become the guardians of a status quo where no meaningful political process is taking place.”

In a recent interview with Reuters, Swedish Commander On felt gave a graphic description of the dangers peacekeepers face.

“Sometimes you needed nerves of steel,” he said. “I remember going to negotiate with a young Israeli Commander at the front and being greeted with a gun pressed into my stomach. Nobody knew if or when he would pull the trigger.”

The first U.N. Operation to be launched, which is still going strong, was the U.N. Truce super vision organization (UNTSO), established in 1948 to monitor ceasefires and armistice agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

A 2,000 strong brigade is in Cyprus to smother tensions between Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities and a 1,300. Strong battalion has been stationed since May 1984 on the Golan Heights as a buffer between Syrian and Israeli forces.

Probably the most controversial moment in the history of U.N. peacekeepers was in 1967 when the U.N. agreed to an Egyptian request to withdraw its force.

The Arab Israeli six day war broke out shortly afterwards.

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