Obama surprise winner of 2009 Nobel Peace Prize (3rd Lead)

Oct 9, 2009, 10:34 GMT

Oslo - US President Barack Obama has won this year's Nobel Peace Prize, it was announced in Oslo on Friday.

The surprise win comes only nine months into Obama's presidency.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee cited Obama's 'extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people.'

Committee Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland said the committee had considered what Obama had done during the year, and the prize was not for the future when asked about challenges facing Obama and the US, in for instance Afghanistan.

Jagland told broadcaster CNN that the five-member committee's decision was 'unanimous'.

He said that Obama had done most for peace 'in the past year,' citing the US president's efforts to promote nuclear disarmament.

It is the third time a sitting US president has won the coveted award. In 1906 the prize was awarded to President Theodore Roosevelt while in 1919 it was won by President Woodrow Wilson.

Obama becomes the 90th winner of the award since 1901.

'There have been positive reactions from Russia and the People's Republic of China to his initiatives,' Jagland told reporters.

Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minister and foreign minister, earlier this year took over as chair of the Nobel Committee. He also mentioned Obama's support for international organizations like the United Nations.

'If you look at the history of the Nobel prize, we have tred to enhance what many personalites have tried to do,' Jagland said, citing the efforts in the 1970s by West German Chancellor Willy Brandt and in the 1980s by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

The prize - worth 10 million kronor (1.4 million dollars) - is scheduled to be presented in Oslo on December 10.

There were a record 205 nominations for the 2009 peace prize, of which 33 organizations.

Last year former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari won the peace prize for his mediation efforts.

Former US President Jimmy Carter was named winner of the peace prize in 2002.

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.