STAVANGER, Norway (AP) — In a break with Nobel tradition, the former secretary of the Nobel Peace Prize committee says the 2009 award to President Barack Obama failed to live up to the panel's expectations.

Geir Lundestad writes in a book to be released on Thursday that the committee had expected the prize to deliver a boost to Obama but "Even many of Obama's supporters believed that the prize was a mistake. In that sense the committee didn't achieve what it had hoped for."

Lundestad stepped down last year after 25 years as the non-voting secretary of the secretive committee.

The 2009 award met criticism in the U.S., where many argued Obama had not been president long enough to have an impact worthy of the Nobel.