BUSH BASHED AS LIAR, CHEAT AND FEARMONGER
nytimes.com
Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Carter, With Jab at Bush
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
PLAINS, Ga., Oct. 11 — For his peacemaking and humanitarian work over the last 25 years, former President Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today, and the Nobel committee used the occasion to send a sharp rebuke to the Bush administration for its aggressive policy toward Iraq.
"In a situation currently marked by threats of the use of power," the Nobel citation read, "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."
Gunnar Berge, the Nobel committee chairman, was even more direct.
The award "should be interpreted as a criticism of the line that the current administration has taken," Mr. Berge said shortly after the award was announced in Oslo.
The peace prize often carries a political message, but never before has it been so pointed.
Mr. Carter, beaming in the affection of his hometown today, said he did not bring up the subject of Iraq when President Bush called to congratulate him this morning.
"I feel very strongly about it, yes," said Mr. Carter, who has said the administration should not act unilaterally against Iraq. "But I didn't think it was appropriate to mention it. I haven't spent the last 22 years walking around saying what I would or wouldn't do if I were still president."
Administration officials sought to duck any controversy over the Nobel committee chairman's remarks, saying they were proud Mr. Carter won the award.
The Nobel Peace Prize, which carries a stipend of $1 million, recognizes the 39th president for his "vital contribution" to the Camp David Accords in 1978, his "outstanding commitment to human rights," his work fighting tropical diseases like guinea worm and river blindness and his continuing interest in furthering democracy. On Monday, Mr. Carter, 78, is off to Jamaica to monitor elections.
More than any other ex-president, Mr. Carter, a Democrat and former Georgia governor, has stretched the gravitas and star power of the Oval Office to promote democratic values across the world. Unlike his peers, he never joined corporate boards or went on the lecture circuit.
Instead, with seemingly endless energy and his signature toothy grin, he has trudged up mountains to meet with warlords, cajoled dictators into granting more freedoms and found a second career of "waging peace," as he calls it. Everywhere he goes, so does his wife, Rosalynn, his most trusted confidant.
His activism has not always won praise. Sometimes he goes on missions with the support of the United States government; sometimes not. When he intervened in an escalating dispute between North and South Korea in 1994, he was criticized by President Bill Clinton for getting too chummy with North Korea's dictator.
Mr. Carter, who won the presidency in 1976, does not disagree that he has been a better former president than president, having lost a landslide election to Ronald Reagan in 1980. He is an icon in many Third World countries, especially in Latin America. He has been nominated more than 10 times for the peace prize, although not in 1978, the year Menachem Begin of Israel and Anwar Sadat of Egypt won it for signing a treaty Mr. Carter wrote. Officials said they received his nomination too late.
Since then, so many nominations have come and gone, Mr. Carter said, he resigned himself to never winning.
"When I got the call this morning at 4 a.m., I thought it was a joke," Mr. Carter said. "I didn't even know this was the day the prize was announced. I usually follow these things, but this year I wasn't paying attention. And then when I talked to the committee, and realized I really won, I was thrilled."
He said he was accepting the prize on behalf of "suffering people around the world." He plans to use the money for an emergency fund for the Carter Center, the private peace-making foundation that Mr. and Mrs. Carter founded 20 years ago.
"I can't tell you how many times I get a call in the middle of the night and some crisis is about to break out," he said. "Now we'll have the funds to get there."
Friends say though Mr. Carter is driven more by his deeply held Christianity than by prizes or compliments, he had always ached for the Nobel Peace Prize. |
