Oct 9, 2009, 9:32 GMT
Oslo - US President Barack Obama has won this year's Nobel Peace Prize, it was announced in Oslo on Friday,
The announcement of the 2009 prize to Obama was a major surprise, and the first time a sitting US president has won the award.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee cited Obama's 'extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.'
The award of the prize to the US president - only nine months into his presidency - came a shock, after other contenders, such as Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, and freed Colombian- French politician Ingrid Betancourt had been tipped for the award.
Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland said the committee had considered what Obama had done during the year, and the prize was not for the future - when asked about challenges facing Obama and the US, in for instance Afghanistan.
Jagland cited that Obama had done most for peace 'in the past year,' citing the US president's efforts to promote nuclear disarmament.
'There have been positive reactions from Russia and the People's Republic of China to his initiatives,' Jagland told reporters.
Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minsiter and foreign minister, earlier this year took over as chair of the five-member Nobel Committee. He also mentioned Obama's support for international organizations like the United Nations.
'If you look at the history of the Nobel prize, we have tried to enhance what many personalities have tried to do,' Jagland said, citing the efforts in the 1970s by West German Chancellor Willy Brandt and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
The prize - worth 10 million kronor (1.4 million dollars) - is scheduled to be presented in Oslo on December 10.
There were a record 205 nominations for the 2009 peace prize, of which 33 organizations.
Last year former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari won the peace prize for his mediation efforts.
Former US President Jimmy Carter was named winner of the peace prize in 2002
The peace prize was the fifth of this year's Nobel awards, which are also made for medicine, physics, chemistry and literature. The prizes were endowed by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.
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