Mohamed El-Baradei, winner of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, uses the award to appeal for nuclear non-proliferation, reports Dina Ezzat Since Friday's announcement that Mohamed El-Baradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), had been chosen -- along with the organisation he directs -- as the 2005 Nobel Peace Laureate, he has taken every opportunity to stress that the award had served to strengthen his determination to "fulfill both aspects of the IAEA mandate -- ensuring the benefits of nuclear energy in the service of humankind, and working towards a world free of nuclear weapons". Speaking to reporters at the Vienna headquarters of the IAEA he said he felt "gratitude, pride and hope" at sharing the prize with the organisation he leads. "With this recognition the Norwegian Nobel Committee underscores the value and the relevance of the work we have been doing. Receiving the award strengthens our resolve at a time when we have a hard road ahead of us." Dr El-Baradei said his hope is that the award will help the international community develop a functional system of global security based not on nuclear deterrents but on addressing the security concerns of all people. The IAEA, he noted, was founded with a simple credo, atoms for peace, underlining its mandate of ensuring nuclear science is used safely and securely for the benefit of humanity and not its destruction. El-Baradei's award was greeted with pride in his hometown of Cairo. President Hosni Mubarak was among the first to congratulate the new Nobel laureate, along with friends and former colleagues of the one-time Egyptian diplomat, including Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, chairmen of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Relations Mohamed Shaker and Abdel-Raouf El-Ridi and the Chairman of the Parliamentary Foreign Relations Committee Mustafa El-Fiqi. El-Baradei was born on 26 June, 1942. He graduated from Cairo University's Faculty of Law in 1962 and joined the diplomatic corps two years later. He became director general of the IAEA in 1997, and is Egypt's fourth Nobel laureate, joining the late Anwar El-Sadat (1978), Naguib Mahfouz (1988) and Ahmed Zweil (1999). The accolade was hailed internationally, by both friends and foes of El-Baradei. Hans Blix, a former IAEA director general and chief of the UN weapons inspection team in Iraq, expressed his appreciation at the prize going to someone who had joined him many times prior to the US invasion in stressing that there was no convincing evidence that Baghdad possessed weapons of mass destruction. Congratulations were also extended by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who fought hard during the past year to block El-Baradei's nomination for a third four-year term and who, as US national security advisor, strongly criticised El-Baradei and Blix over Iraq. Several commentators described the prize as a slap in the face of the US, a suggestion Washington has been keen to downplay. Asked if El-Baradei's winning the prize was a rebuff to an administration that had consistently crticised him for being too lenient over Iraq, State Department official Nicholas Burns, said: "On the contrary ... we have great respect for him and we are genuinely pleased that this very important international institution is being recognised... it's well- deserved." Some international non-proliferation activists have criticised the prize, arguing that, 60 years after the dropping of atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki it should have been awarded to the survivors of those atrocities rather than to the chief of an international organisation that, at the end day, acts only when it has been given a green light by Washington. That, they argue, would at least have had the virtue of reminding the world of the horrors attendant on nuclear proliferation at a time of intense international scrutiny of the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea, though not of Israel's massive nuclear arsenal. Meanwhile, Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres took the occasion as an opportunity to claim that El-Baradei was doing too little to prevent Iran from developing its alleged nuclear programme while Iranian officials expressed concern that the prize might tempt the IAEA to adopt a more gung- ho approach to Tehran. These critics were joined by several Arab commentators, who argue that the IAEA chief would have never received the prize had it not been for his determined avoidance of any criticism of Israel's policy of nuclear ambiguity.
