IAEA, agency chief win Nobel Peace Prize
(AP)
Updated: 2005-10-08 07:33

Instead, he said, the honor was "a message: 'Hey guys, you need to get your act together you need to work together in multinational institutions.'"

The award also was a signal "going to the Arab world, going to the Western world that we ... have a lot in common and we need to work together to survive," ElBaradei said.

Describing his phone conversation with Rice, he said they both "agreed that we will have to continue to work together" on issues including dispelling suspicions about Iran's nuclear ambitions and getting North Korea to return to the nonproliferation fold.

"The award sends a very strong message: 'Keep doing what you are doing,'" he said. "We continue to believe that in all of our activities we have to be impartial, objective and work with integrity."

In Washington, Rice reaffirmed in a statement that the Bush administration was "committed to working with the IAEA to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons technology."

Nobel committee chairman Ole Danbolt Mjoes also denied the award was meant as a slap at the United States.

"This is not a kick in the shin of any nation, any leader," he said. "It is a challenge to all leaders in the world and all the world's nations to go much further on the road toward ridding the world of nuclear weapons."

The award was the highlight in the career of ElBaradei, who followed his father's footsteps in becoming a lawyer before working as a diplomat for Egypt's government and later a top aide to the foreign minister. He received a doctorate in international law at the New York University School of Law in 1974 and later became an adjunct professor there.

ElBaradei joined the IAEA in 1984 and rose through the ranks of the 139-nation agency, becoming its head in 1997.

Naturally shy, he grew into the job as the IAEA dealt with crises in Iraq, North Korea and Iran, becoming an ever more outspoken advocate of nonproliferation in comments that mutated from stilted statements to polished sound bites.