NYTimes.com Article: Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Carter, With Jab at Bush

[chenry@mail.la.utexas.edu]

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Here is Jimmy Carter's reaction to his Nobel peace prize.  Note that he is very much opposed to any unilateral military action in Iraq. Indeed some pundits criticized him for engaging in politics on this solemn occasion, by attacking the Bush Administration.  Carter's official announcement accepting the award, however, makes no mention of any current events or takes any partisan stand.  He simply reaffirms his commitment to human rights.

chenry@gov.utexas.edu


Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Carter, With Jab at Bush

October 12, 2002
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN 




 

PLAINS, Ga., Oct. 11 - For his peacemaking and humanitarian
work over the last 25 years, former President Jimmy Carter
was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today, and the Nobel
committee used the occasion to send a sharp rebuke to the
Bush administration for its aggressive policy toward Iraq. 

"In a situation currently marked by threats of the use of
power," the Nobel citation read, "Carter has stood by the
principles that conflicts must as far as possible be
resolved through mediation and international cooperation
based on international law, respect for human rights and
economic development." 

Gunnar Berge, the Nobel committee chairman, was even more
direct. 

The award "should be interpreted as a criticism of the line
that the current administration has taken," Mr. Berge said
shortly after the award was announced in Oslo. 

The peace prize often carries a political message, but
never before has it been so pointed. 

Mr. Carter, beaming in the affection of his hometown today,
said he did not bring up the subject of Iraq when President
Bush called to congratulate him this morning. 

"I feel very strongly about it, yes," said Mr. Carter, who
has said the administration should not act unilaterally
against Iraq. "But I didn't think it was appropriate to
mention it. I haven't spent the last 22 years walking
around saying what I would or wouldn't do if I were still
president." 

Administration officials sought to duck any controversy
over the Nobel committee chairman's remarks, saying they
were proud Mr. Carter won the award. 

The Nobel Peace Prize, which carries a stipend of $1
million, recognizes the 39th president for his "vital
contribution" to the Camp David Accords in 1978, his
"outstanding commitment to human rights," his work fighting
tropical diseases like guinea worm and river blindness and
his continuing interest in furthering democracy. On Monday,
Mr. Carter, 78, is off to Jamaica to monitor elections. 

More than any other ex-president, Mr. Carter, a Democrat
and former Georgia governor, has stretched the gravitas and
star power of the Oval Office to promote democratic values
across the world. Unlike his peers, he never joined
corporate boards or went on the lecture circuit. 

Instead, with seemingly endless energy and his signature
toothy grin, he has trudged up mountains to meet with
warlords, cajoled dictators into granting more freedoms and
found a second career of "waging peace," as he calls it.
Everywhere he goes, so does his wife, Rosalynn, his most
trusted confidant. 

His activism has not always won praise. Sometimes he goes
on missions with the support of the United States
government; sometimes not. When he intervened in an
escalating dispute between North and South Korea in 1994,
he was criticized by President Bill Clinton for getting too
chummy with North Korea's dictator. 

Mr. Carter, who won the presidency in 1976, does not
disagree that he has been a better former president than
president, having lost a landslide election to Ronald
Reagan in 1980. He is an icon in many Third World
countries, especially in Latin America. He has been
nominated more than 10 times for the peace prize, although
not in 1978, the year Menachem Begin of Israel and Anwar
Sadat of Egypt won it for signing a treaty Mr. Carter
wrote. Officials said they received his nomination too
late. 

Since then, so many nominations have come and gone, Mr.
Carter said, he resigned himself to never winning. 

"When I got the call this morning at 4 a.m., I thought it
was a joke," Mr. Carter said. "I didn't even know this was
the day the prize was announced. I usually follow these
things, but this year I wasn't paying attention. And then
when I talked to the committee, and realized I really won,
I was thrilled." 

He said he was accepting the prize on behalf of "suffering
people around the world." He plans to use the money for an
emergency fund for the Carter Center, the private
peace-making foundation that Mr. and Mrs. Carter founded 20
years ago. 

"I can't tell you how many times I get a call in the middle
of the night and some crisis is about to break out," he
said. "Now we'll have the funds to get there." 

Friends say though Mr. Carter is driven more by his deeply
held Christianity than by prizes or compliments, he had
always ached for the Nobel Peace Prize. 

"This is terrific," said Robert E. Rubin, former treasury
secretary and a fishing buddy of Mr. Carter. "This will
take someone who already has a great deal of moral stature
and give him even greater stature, which will make him even
more effective at what he does." 

Douglas Brinkley, a historian who wrote, "The Unfinished
Presidency" about Mr. Carter, said this prize will
transform the former president's legacy, especially his
defeat by Mr. Reagan. 

"It's the most important moment for him because in one
afternoon by being awarded the Nobel he has wiped the word
`loser' off of his chest," Mr. Brinkley said. "Now he is
the Nobel Prize winner and that will be the tag that will
stay with him for his remaining years." 

Mr. Carter is the third United States president to win the
award, after Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. 

He is the second Georgian to win. The Rev. Dr. Martin
Luther King won it in 1964. Mr. Carter has said on many
occasions that one of the biggest regrets of his life is
that he never met Dr. King, a contemporary. As governor of
Georgia, Mr. Carter hung Dr. King's portrait in the state
Capitol. 

Mr. Carter's stiffest competition this year came from
President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and a handful of
Chinese dissidents and United States disarmament experts. 

Some of Mr. Carter's biggest accomplishments, the Nobel
committee said, were the conflicts he prevented. In 1994,
with United States warships steaming toward Haiti, Mr.
Carter averted a bloody crisis by convincing a military
junta to leave. 

He also brokered a truce in Bosnia that year and has
negotiated at length with warring groups in the Sudan. He
made news this spring by visiting Cuba and publicly
scolding President Fidel Castro. 

"When he was president, he refused to play the insider
Washington game and did things on his own," Mr. Brinkley
said. "So in a sense this achievement is a result of the
very same character traits that doomed him politically." 

In Plains, the peanut farm town where Mr. Carter grew up
and started his political career, Main Street was shut down
today for a ceremony and the residents - all 637 - were
cordially invited. It was Jimmy Carter's day - though it's
almost always like that here. 

There were farmers in straw hats, fanning themselves with
Nobel Prize programs. And banners that read
"Congratulations Jimmy! We love you!" And lots of hugs and
"Way to go, man!" 

It did not take long after Mr. Carter received the call
from Oslo for word to spread in Plains, where Mr. Carter
and his wife live. 

Craig Walters, an elementary school teacher here, said his
father called him at 8 a.m. 

"My daddy was yelling at me `Get up! Get dressed! Get
downtown! Jimmy won a Nobel!' " 

Though still busy writing books, hammering houses together
with Habitat for Humanity, fund-raising, chairing
election-reform meetings, and making chairs (he is a
wood-working addict), Mr. Carter is slowing down. A quiet
search for a successor is taking place at the Carter
Center, which has headquarters in Atlanta and projects in
65 countries. 

"I see the end of my active life coming in the next few
months or years," Mr. Carter said today. 

"But I have to tell you, these years are among some of the
most gratifying of my life," he added, his eyes
brightening. "I have complete independence. I have access
to world leaders. I can go anywhere I want at moment's
notice." 

And, as a very visible ex-president, he can still create a
stir. 

Today, when asked his position on Iraq, Mr. Carter said he
would not have voted for the resolution passed in the
Senate, authorizing the president to use force. 

At a media briefing later, White House officials tried to
play down the criticism from Mr. Carter and the Nobel
chairman. Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary,
said Mr. Bush began his day with a 7 a.m. phone call
congratulating Mr. Carter, and added: "The president thinks
this is a great day for Jimmy Carter; that's what he's
going to focus on." 

At that, the veteran White House correspondent, Helen
Thomas, who covered Mr. Carter in office, asked: "Isn't it
a great day for the American people? And did Carter express
to the president his well-known opposition to a war against
Iraq?" 

Mr. Fleischer replied: "I can just tell you, Helen, it was
friendly call. It was a short call. And the purpose of the
call was to congratulate him on the winning of the Nobel
Peace Prize."

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/12/national/12NOBE.html?ex=1035442192&ei=1&en=edf9c1dbeaab0ed4



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