Chief nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei said on Friday he feels ”humbled” after winning the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, and said it sends ”a very strong message” about the importance of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) role.
The Egyptian diplomat shares the prize with the IAEA, the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency that he leads.
”I’m extremely humbled and honoured,” ElBaradei said.
Journalists welcomed him with applause and cheers as he entered the room.
ElBaradei said the prize is a recognition of the agency’s work, and of the road that lies ahead as it continues its work to keep the world safe from nuclear weapons.
”The award … is something that gives me lots of pride and also lots of responsibility,” he said. ”The award sends a very strong message. Keep doing what you are doing.”
ElBaradei said his agency strives to be a neutral agent for peace.
”We continue to believe that in all of our activities, we have to be impartial, objective and work with integrity,” he said.
ElBaradei said the agency has ”one simple objective: to make sure that we have a world free from nuclear weapons, that we have a world free from nuclear terrorism”.
”I am here to further peace and development, and that I will continue to do.”
He said he is proud of several of the agency’s achievements, including eliminating the Iraqi nuclear-weapons programme between 1991 and 1997 and dealing with the threat of nuclear terrorism that has increased since the September 11 2001 attacks in the United States.
”We are not only a nuclear watchdog but also … a caring mother” that tries to spread the benefits of nuclear energy throughout the world while keeping it safe from nuclear weapons, he said.
Nobel Prize ‘slanted against grassroots groups’
Meanwhile, nuclear-bomb survivors nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize accused the prize committee on Friday of passing them over in order not to offend the US, and said the award is slanted against grassroots groups.
Senji Yamaguchi, an activist whose face was disfigured by the Nagasaki bombing, openly criticised the Nobel judges after the award went to the IAEA and ElBaradei.
The 75-year-old, captured in a 1945 photograph showing gruesome radiation burns, has lectured across the world to urge an end to nuclear weapons. He helped found Nihon Hidankyo, the Japanese confederation of nuclear survivors.
”I don’t understand why Nihon Hidankyo didn’t get the award this year. It makes me wonder if the Nobel Peace Prize committee is paying special consideration to a certain country,” Yamaguchi said.
”The US is responsible for not being able to stop other countries from possessing nuclear weapons,” he told reporters at his Nagasaki nursing home where he has spent the past two years. ”I want ElBaradei and the IAEA to work harder to stop the possibility of repeating the Hiroshima and Nagasaki tragedies in the future.”
Yamaguchi and Nihon Hidankyo were seen as leading contenders for the award this year, which is the 60th anniversary of the world’s only nuclear attacks.
In contrast to the strong criticism by Yamaguchi, who would have been Japan’s only second Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi congratulated this year’s winners.
”Congratulations. The IAEA has been involved in world peace with regard to nuclear issues and I wish it will continue doing its best,” Koizumi told reporters.
Nihon Hidankyo has been nominated at least three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. The group’s secretary general, Terumi Tanaka, also a nuclear-bomb survivor, noted that the last time, in 2001, the award went to the United Nations and Secretary General Kofi Annan.
”I feel utmost regret that the prize has gone to a UN agency again,” Tanaka told reporters in Tokyo.
”The UN and public organisations are just doing their jobs,” said Tanaka. ”I thought the prize would be best suited to an NGO like us who have campaigned against nuclear arms and talked about the bombing experiences over the past 60 years.”
Outrage
Green activists also voiced outrage on Friday, saying the IAEA has helped military nuclear proliferation by encouraging civilian nuclear power.
A French group, Sortir du Nucleaire (Get Out of Nuclear), said the IAEA should be scrapped because, by ”promoting” civilian nuclear plants, it had given countries the means to build atomic bombs.
”The IAEA is hoodwinking the public by claiming that its inspections are preventing access to nuclear weapons by countries that have signed the [nuclear] Non-Proliferation Treaty,” Sortir du Nucleaire said in a press statement.
”India, Pakistan and Israel have joined the five ‘great powers’ [the US, Russia, China, France and Britain] in having an unjustifiable right to possessing nuclear weapons and in not meeting their pledges on nuclear disarmament.
”Recent developments [Iran and North Korea] have confirmed the IAEA’s patent failure,” it said.
In Amsterdam, Greenpeace International spokesperson Mike Townsley acknowledged that IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has been ”a voice of sanity” in his advocacy of a nuclear-free Middle East.
But, Townsley said, ElBaradei is trapped by the IAEA’s ”contradictory role, as nuclear policeman and nuclear salesman”.
The agency’s dual function is to promote civilian nuclear energy while trying to prevent countries from using the self-same technology to make nuclear bombs, he said.
George Monbiot, a radical author and commentator with the British daily The Guardian, said the 2005 prize to the IAEA and its boss is ”a reward for failure in an age of rampant proliferation”.
He saw a parallel with the controversial awarding of the 1973 Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger. The former US secretary of state and national security adviser helped extend the Vietnam War to Laos and Cambodia before negotiating the conflict’s end.
”The currency [of the Nobel Peace Prize] is beginning to be devalued,” Monbiot said.
Disappointment
Meanwhile, former Polish president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Lech Walesa said on Friday he is disappointed that this year’s prize was awarded to an organisation, not an individual.
”The Nobel prize should go to individuals. Alfred Nobel was himself very much an individualist and I believe his prize should reward, encourage and support those who do something important for their country or for the world — for Africa, China, Tibet or North Korea, for example,” Walesa said.
”Naturally, the IAEA has done many important things for the world. But the Nobel Prize should be wind in the sails of an individual who works for the greater good, who is a symbol,” he said.
Walesa was awarded the coveted prize in 1983 for his part in creating and leading the Solidarity trade union and for being ”a shining example to all those who under different conditions fight for freedom and humanity”, the Nobel committee said at the time in presenting the prize. — Sapa-AFP, Sapa-AP