This is surreal:
IAEA, ElBaradei share Nobel Peace Prize
Quote:
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 prevent states and terrorists from 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 the agency he has led since 1997 a much needed "shot in the arm" to tackle nuclear crises in Iran and North Korea.
ElBaradei said he had been sure someone else had won because he did not receive a traditional advance telephone call from the Committee, which has been worried by media leaks. He learned of the prize 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 five-member 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.
Set up in 1957, the IAEA polices a U.N. nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), conducting inspections to ensure that nuclear facilities and materials intended for peaceful purposes cannot be diverted to produce weapons.
Despite past differences over Iraq's weapons, 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."
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All we need now is for Bush to give the head of the US Army Corps of Engineers a Freedom Medal and all will be well.
I mean, most of the levees in New Orleans didn't fail.
During ElBaradei's tenure not every country developed nukes.