ElBaradei and IAEA win Nobel Prize

By Alister Doyle
10/7/05
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051007/ts_nm/nobel_peace_dc


OSLO (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog and its head Mohamed ElBaradei, who clashed with Washington over Iraq, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for fighting the spread of nuclear weapons.

The Nobel Committee praised the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and ElBaradei, a 63-year-old Egyptian, for their battle to stop states and terrorists acquiring the atom bomb, and to ensure safe civilian use of nuclear energy.

In Vienna, ElBaradei said the $1.3 million Nobel award, widely viewed as the world's top accolade, would give him and his agency a much needed "shot in the arm" as they tackle nuclear crises in Iran and North Korea.

ElBaradei said he had been sure he would not win because he had not received a traditional advance telephone call from the Committee, worried by media leaks. He learned of his win at home while watching television with his wife, Aida.

He said he jumped to his feet and hugged and kissed her in celebration. The Vienna-based IAEA had been a favorite from a list of 199 Nobel candidates in a year marking 60 years since the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

The Nobel Committee expressed hope that the award would spur work to outlaw atomic weapons.

"At a time when disarmament efforts appear deadlocked, when there is a danger that nuclear arms will spread both to states and to terrorist groups, and when nuclear power again appears to be playing an increasingly significant role, IAEA's work is of incalculable importance," it said in a statement.

Despite past differences, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice phoned to congratulate ElBaradei and plaudits came from world leaders like Britain's Tony Blair and France's Jacques Chirac, who said he was "delighted."

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the 2001 peace laureate, said it should be a wake-up call to the perils of nuclear war.

At last month's U.N. summit "We couldn't even agree on a paragraph on non-proliferation or disarmament. It was a disgrace. I hope that this award will wake us all up," he said.

The IAEA has had little success in standoffs with Iran and North Korea and ElBaradei has faced criticism from many quarters, most recently from both the United States and Iran in his efforts to investigate Tehran's nuclear program.

Saddam's Weapons

He came to prominence before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 by challenging Washington's argument that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons were found after the overthrow of Saddam and a program discovered in the early 1990s appeared to have been abandoned as Iraq had said.

The United States had opposed his reappointment for a third term in a post he has held since 1997.

Some experts say the IAEA has achieved too little to merit the prize. But ElBaradei was unbowed.

"The award sends a very strong message: 'Keep doing what you are doing -- be impartial, act with integrity', and that is what we intend to do," ElBaradei said after applause from U.N. staff.

North Korea expelled IAEA inspectors on December 31, 2002 and pulled out of the global benchmark arms-control pact, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) before announcing it had nuclear weapons.

And the IAEA has been probing Iran's nuclear program for 2-1/2 years to determine whether its aims are peaceful as Tehran says or aimed at producing atomic weapons as Washington charges.

The Nobel Committee said ElBaradei was an "unafraid advocate" of measures to strengthen non-proliferation. Other contenders for the prize had ranged from presidents to Irish rock stars Bono and Bob Geldof.

The prize, named after Sweden's Alfred Nobel, a philanthropist and inventor of dynamite, was first awarded in 1901 and is due to be handed out in Oslo on December 10.

The 2004 prize went to Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai. ElBaradei was the first Egyptian winner since President Anwar Sadat in 1978.

Criticism Of U.S.?

Stein Toennesson, head of the Peace Research Institute, Oslo, described the award to ElBaradei in person as well as the IAEA as "an implicit criticism of the United States." But Nobel Committee chairman Ole Danbolt Mjoes rejected that idea.

"This is not a kick in the legs to any country," he told a news conference. A former chairman described the 2002 prize to ex-U.S. president Jimmy Carter as a "kick in the legs" to U.S. President George W. Bush's policies in Iraq.

The 2005 award seemed to confirm an anti-nuclear trend on major anniversaries of Hiroshima. In 1995 the prize went to British ban-the-bomb scientist Joseph Rotblat and his Pugwash group and in 1985 to International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

"The Norwegian Nobel Committee has concentrated on the struggle to diminish the significance of nuclear arms in international politics, with a view to their abolition," its statement said.

"That the world has achieved little in this respect makes active opposition to nuclear arms all the more important today."

(Additional reporting by John Acher, James Kilner and Terje Solsvik in Oslo, Francois Murphy in Vienna, Richard Waddington in Geneva)