 OSLO (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog and its head Mohamed ElBaradei won the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in an award calculated to help efforts to banish the peril of nuclear arms six decades after Hiroshima. | Giggle. Snicker. Bwahahahah.......oh, this isn't Scrappleface? |
The Nobel Committee praised the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and ElBaradei, a 63-year-old Egyptian, for work to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to new states and to terrorists, and to ensure safe civilian use of nuclear energy. | Well, I suppose if you leave out North Korea, Iran and the Khan network..... |
ElBaradei learnt he had won from television news at home after missing a telephone call to his Vienna office from the Nobel Committee in Norway. ElBaradei "was very humbled by the announcement. Surprised, humbled", IAEA spokesman Marc Vidricaire said. "He sees this as support to what the agency has been doing in the field of non-proliferation, in the field of disarmament."
| Not to mention getting a third term over the US objection |
Congratulations came from world leaders like Britain's Tony Blair and France's Jacques Chirac, who said he was "delighted". Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, the 1990 laureate, praised ElBaradei for doing his job "solidly and responsibly".
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, also a peace laureate, called it "a welcome reminder of the acute need to make progress on the issue of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament". | Kofi is a sterling example of why this prise has as much value as one you'd find in a Cracker Jack box. Without the tastey snack. |
The IAEA has had little success in recent 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 programme. | So tell me again why he won? |
Washington had opposed his reappointment to a new term. | OK, thanks. I rest my case. |
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. A programme discovered in the early 1990s appeared to have been abandoned as Iraq had said. Some experts say the IAEA has achieved too little in North Korea and Iran to merit the prize. Elbaradei is unbowed. "There have been two nuclear shocks to the world already," ElBaradei once said. "The Chernobyl accident and the IAEA's discovery of Iraq's clandestine nuclear weapons program. It is vital we do all in our power to prevent a third." | You mean the Khan network? Oh, wait, you missed that one didn't you? |
The Nobel Committee, acknowledging that the world's lack of progress in nuclear disarmament, expressed hope that this award would spur work to outlaw atomic weapons 60 years after the U.S. atom bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. | Good intentions and putting on a show being more important than acomplishing anything |
ElBaradei was an "unafraid advocate" of measures to strengthen non-proliferation, it said. He and the IAEA had been among favourites for the award and won from a record field of 199 candidates ranging from presidents to Irish rock star Bono. | Bono's done more for peace than ElBaradei's left pinky toe. |
"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," the Committee said.| "They can stick their heads in the sand with the best of 'em!" |
The prize, named after Sweden's Alfred Nobel, a philanthropist and inventor of dynamite, is worth $1.3 million and is due to be handed out in Oslo on December 10. The 2004 prize also went to an African, Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai. ElBaradei was the first Egyptian winner since President Anwar Sadat in 1978. | Sadat died for his Prize. Keep that in mind, Mo. |
Nobel Committee chairman Ole Danbolt Mjoes said the prize was not a veiled criticism of Washington after ElBaradei and President George W. Bush feuded over Iraq. | He's correct, there is no veil |
"This is not a kick in the legs to any country," he told a news conference. A former chairman described the 2002 prize to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter as a "kick in the legs" to Bush. Still, one expert said the prize would have clearly been less controversial if it had gone to the IAEA alone. ElBaradei's inclusion "is an implicit criticism of the United States", said Stein Toennesson, head of the Peace Research Institute, Oslo. The 2005 award seems to confirm an anti-nuclear trend on major anniversaries of Hiroshima.| Only the anklebiters are anti-nuclear. |
In 1995, British ban-the-bomb scientist Joseph Rotblat won with his Pugwash organisation. And in 1985, the award went to a U.S-Soviet group of doctors, 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," the committee said in a statement. "That the world has achieved little in this respect makes active opposition to nuclear arms all the more important today," it said. | Especially when those arms are held by the United States and Israel. |
|