OSLO, Norway (AP) \u2014 Jimmy Carter accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Tuesday \u2014 long-awaited for his diplomacy in the Middle East in the \u201970s \u2014 with a warning to nations to avoid bloodshed in resolving their conflicts.
\nWith the world on edge over terrorism and a possible U.S.-led attack on Iraq, the former U.S. president told an audience at the Nobel ceremony that war only breeds more war.
\n\u201cWar may sometimes be a necessary evil,\u201d he said. \u201cBut no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other\u2019s children.\u201d
\nAnd while he did not mention President Bush by name, Carter cautioned against the use of war as a tool of policy.
\n\u201cFor powerful countries to adopt a principle of preventative war may well set an example that can have catastrophic consequences,\u201d he said.
\nCarter, 78, accepted the award at a solemn ceremony with music and flowers at the Oslo City Hall.
\nHe was honored for his pursuit of peace, health and human rights that began with the 1978 Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt that \u2014 but for a formality \u2014 would have won him the prize 24 years ago. He was nominated too late.
\nCarter\u2019s wife, Rosalynn, and their children and grandchildren were among the hundreds in the audience, as was Norwegian King Harald V.
\nSmiling broadly, Carter, wearing a dark suit and red tie with blue-and-white stripes, displayed the gold Nobel medal and diploma to sustained applause. The prize also includes $1 million cash.
\n\u201cThis year\u2019s laureate does the opposite of what his countryman, Mark Twain, once wrote about forgetting where you bury the peace pipe but not where the battle-ax is buried. Carter never mislays the peace-pipe,\u201d Nobel official Gunner Berge said.
\nBerge, chairman of the five-member Norwegian awards committee, caused a stir when he announced the prize in October and called it a \u201ckick in the leg\u201d to President Bush.
\nCarter, a Democrat, has repeatedly urged the Republican administration to continue working with the United Nations to ensure Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction, and to avoid unilateral military action.
\n\u201cGlobal challenges must be met by an emphasis on peace, in harmony with others, with strong alliances and international consensus,\u201d he said. He urged respect for the United Nations as an international forum for solving disputes.
\nIn his anti-war appeal, Carter also cited the 1950 Nobel peace laureate, Ralph Bunche, also an American.
\n\u201cTo suggest that war can prevent war is a base play on words and a despicable form of warmongering. The objective of any who sincerely believe in peace clearly must be to exhaust every honorable recourse in the effort to save the peace,\u201d he said, citing Bunche\u2019s Nobel lecture. \u201cThe world has had ample evidence that war begets only conditions which beget further war.\u201d
\nNearly 2,000 Norwegian children greeted Carter in a peace celebration outside city hall in the snow-covered Norwegian capital. Tuesday night, thousands of Norwegians held a torch-light parade in Carter\u2019s honor, ahead of the traditional Nobel lecture.
\nA Nobel concert, featuring performers including Willie Nelson and Santana, is scheduled for Wednesday.
\nAfter the ceremony and out of view of Carter, a small but vocal group of dissident Iranians denounced the former president\u2019s silence on human rights abuses in Iran, carrying a sign that said, \u201cWhat have you done for Iran?\u201d
\nDuring his address Tuesday, the Nobel chairman said not including Carter in the 1978 prize to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat for the Camp David agreement Carter brokered was \u201cone of the real sins of omission\u201d in Nobel history.
\n\u201cJimmy Carter will probably not go down in American history as the most effective president,\u201d Berge said. \u201cBut he is certainly the best ex-president the country has ever had.\u201d
\nCarter \u2014 a former Georgia governor and peanut farmer who lost his presidential re-election bid to Ronald Reagan in 1980 \u2014 smiled while listening to an English translation of Berge\u2019s speech on headphones.
\nThe Nobel prizes, first awarded in 1901, were created by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel in his will. The prizes are always presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel\u2019s death in 1896.
\nThe peace prizes are presented in Oslo, while prizes in economics, medicine, physics, chemistry and literature are presented in Stockholm, Sweden.
\n\u2014\u2014\u2014
\nOn the Net:
\nNobel Peace Prize: http:\/\/www.nobel.no
\nCarter Center: http:\/\/www.cartercenter.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
OSLO, Norway (AP) \u2014 Jimmy Carter accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Tuesday \u2014 long-awaited for his diplomacy in the Middle East in the \u201970s \u2014 with a warning to nations to avoid bloodshed in resolving their conflicts. With the world on edge over terrorism and a possible U.S.-led attack on Iraq, the former U.S. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}