OSLO — President Barack Obama has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.
The 48-year-old Obama captured the award "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," the annual award's committee said Friday in Oslo.
Obama said he was surprised and deeply humbled by the honor, noting that he did not see it "as a recognition of my own accomplishments," but rather as a recognition of goals he has set for the United States and the world.
"I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many transformative figures that have been honored by this prize," said the 44th president of the United States.
Obama is the third sitting U.S. president to win the award, joining President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 and President Woodrow Wilson in 1919.
The committee said it had attached special importance to Obama's vision of a world without nuclear weapons.
"Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics," the committee said in a statement. "Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.
"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population.
"For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama's appeal that 'Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.'"
Was Barack Obama the right choice for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize? Click here to vote in our watercooler poll.
- Comment
