Carter Wins Nobel Peace Prize, Bush Rebuked
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Carter Wins Nobel Peace Prize, Bush Rebuked
Fri Oct 11, 1:32 PM ET
By Alister Doyle
OSLO (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday by a committee whose head called the decision a deliberate slap in the face for the current U.S. government over its policy on Iraq.
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[Video] Jimmy Carter Wins Nobel Peace Prize
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Carter, a Democrat who was president from 1977 to 1981, was awarded the $1 million prize from a record field of 156 candidates for decades of work to resolve conflicts from the Middle East to North Korea (news - web sites), and from Haiti to Eritrea.
"This honor serves as an inspiration not only to us but also to suffering people around the world and I accept it on their behalf," Carter said in a statement released by his non-profit Carter Center in Atlanta.
The secretive five-member prize committee praised Carter, 78, for "decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development."
The prize, named after Swedish philanthropist Alfred Nobel, was widely hailed abroad as honoring an elder statesman who has been praised more since leaving office than when president.
"It's great. He deserves it," said U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites), who shared the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize with the United Nations (news - web sites).
The committee praised Carter for an "outstanding commitment" to human rights and for everything from his battle against tropical diseases to his help for developing nations. The prize will be handed over on December 10 in Oslo.
Carter came close to winning the award in 1978 when Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat shared the prize for the peace accord that he brokered.
The committee that year wanted to give Carter the prize but he had not been formally nominated by the February deadline.
SLAP IN THE FACE FOR WASHINGTON
The chairman of the committee, Gunnar Berge, used the prize to make a scathing attack on President Bush (news - web sites)'s campaign to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).
U.S. lawmakers gave Bush solid bipartisan support on Thursday for a strike on Iraq. Carter said last month it would be a "tragic mistake" for the United States to attack Iraq without U.N. backing.
"With the position Carter has taken...(the award) can and must also be seen as criticism of the line the current U.S. administration has taken on Iraq," Berge, a former Labour cabinet minister, told reporters after announcing the award.
Asked if it was a "kick in the leg" at Washington, Berge said: "Yes, the answer is an unconditional 'yes."' A "kick in the leg" is a Norwegian phrase meaning "a slap in the face."
But two committee members said Berge had gone too far. Inger-Marie Ytterhorn, an ex-parliamentarian of a far-right party, said Berge had acted "unprofessionally" in going beyond the official citation that only made a veiled reference to Iraq.
Berge defended his interpretation. "I expressed myself as leader of the committee...not on behalf of all of the members," he told Norwegian NRK radio.
INCENSING GOVERNMENTS
Committee decisions have often antagonized governments.
The 1975 prize awarded to human rights campaigner Andrei Sakharov incensed the Soviet Union. The 1935 prize to German anti-Nazi journalist Carl von Ossietzky prompted Hitler to ban Germans from ever accepting Nobel Prizes.
And the committee angered China by giving the prize to Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, in 1989 only months after the Tiananmen massacre. In 1997, anti-land mine campaigners won for promoting a treaty opposed by Washington.
The official 2002 text says: "In a situation currently marked by threats of the use of power, Carter has stood by the principles that conflicts must as far as possible be resolved through mediation and international cooperation based on international law, respect for human rights and economic development."
Carter won from a field that included Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Chinese dissidents and U.S. disarmament experts in a year dominated by the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Ex-South African President Nelson Mandela, who won the award in 1993, praised Carter through his spokeswoman. "Even now when President Bush has taken that belligerent attitude, he (Carter) has condemned him," Mandela said.
And Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham told a Helsinki news conference: "I think the world will generally accept this award as being a very positive sign... about how we would like to see the United States behave in world affairs."
A former peanut farmer, Carter was the third U.S. President to win the Nobel Prize since it was set up in 1901, following Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson in 1919. |
