Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize

The U.S President Barack Obama (pictured) is the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

He has got this Prize for giving the world citizens a hope for the better future.

Obama was elected as the first African-American president of the United States of America in November 2008.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said it attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.

"Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics.

Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play," the committee said on its website.

"Only very rarely has a person, to the same extent as Obama, captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future.

His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population," the committee said.

There were a record 205 nominations for the 2009 peace prize, of which 33 were organizations.
Last year, former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari won the peace prize for his mediation efforts.

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.The Nobel Peace Prize - worth 10 million kronor ($1.4 million dollars) - is scheduled to be presented in Oslo Dec 10.