US President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Friday for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, citing his outreach to the Muslim world and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation. The stunning choice made Obama the third sitting US president to win the Nobel Peace Prize and shocked Nobel observers because Obama took office less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline. Obama's name had been mentioned in speculation before the award but many Nobel watchers believed it was too early to award the president. “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,” the committee said. “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.” “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. Theodore Roosevelt won the award in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson won in 1919. Former president Jimmy Carter won the award in 2002, while former vice president Al Gore shared the 2007 prize with the UN panel on climate change. The Nobel committee received a record 205 nominations for this year's prize. In his 1895 will, Alfred Nobel stipulated that the peace prize should go “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses.”
