Former US president Jimmy Carter has won the2002 Nobel Peace Prize today.
He was awarded the honour for "his decades of untiring effortto find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advancedemocracy and human rights, and to promote economic and socialdevelopment," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.
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Mr Carter, 78, a Democrat, was president from 1977 to 1981 but his achievements in office fell short of his own expectations, troubled by economic recession at home and stormy relations with revolutionary Iran.
He left office with one epic foreign policy achievement - the 1979 Camp David accord between Egypt and Israel - plus a modest list of domestic reforms.
Mr Carter has earned more plaudits since leaving office as a globe-trotting mediator and peacemaker intent on defusing international crises.
In 1994 he led a US delegation to Haiti to persuade the military junta to step aside and avert a US invasion of the country.
In June the same year, he mounted a self-assigned peace mission to North Korea, meeting Stalinist leader Kim Il-sung and helping to temper a nuclear dispute that many feared could have led to war on the divided Korean peninsula.
In 1980, with the economy crumbling and the Iran hostage crisis inflaming passions, he was swept from office by Mr Ronald Reagan in a defeat of humbling proportions. Mr Reagan took office in January 1981.
Mr Carter returned home to Plains, Georgia, and for some years led a life of relative obscurity, treated like a pariah by the leaders of his own party and shunned by its candidates.
But he replaced the forgotten-man image with that of busy elder statesman and diplomatic mediator, using skills honed at the White House in promoting Israeli-Egyptian peace talks - and winning more public affection than he ever enjoyed as president.
"People who thought he was a disaster in the White House regard him as a model elder statesman," columnist Ms Mary McGrory wrote of his rebound. "He goes everywhere, doing good."
TheCarter Centre has also set up health programmes that have tackled crippling third world diseases such as guinea-worm disease and river blindness.
MrCarter also used his carpentry skills to help build housing for the poor. He and his wife Rosalynn wrote a 1987 best-seller, "Everything to Gain: Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life."
Asked in 1991 to assess his own presidency, he said: "He tried hard, attempted the right things, was not always successful. Maybe he was naive in many ways."
Mr Carter graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1946, served in the nuclear submarine programme and left to manage the family peanut farming business. He became a millionaire, a Georgia state legislator and the state governor from 1971-75.