U.N., Annan collect Nobel Peace Prize

OSLO, Norway -- Saying the world "entered the third millennium through a gate of fire" ignited on Sept. 11, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan accepted the centennial Nobel Peace Prize on Monday with a call for humanity to fight poverty, ignorance and disease.

Annan said the terrorist attacks in the United States showed that "new threats make no distinction between races, nations or regions." The world now has "a deeper awareness of the bonds that bind us all -- in pain and in prosperity," he said.

"Today, no walls can separate humanitarian or human rights crises in one part of the world from national security crises in another," he said. "What begins with the failure to uphold the dignity of one life, all too often ends with a calamity for entire nations."

Annan shared the prize with the United Nations as a whole.

The chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee presented the $950,000 prize, which includes diplomas and gold medals, to Annan and the president of the U.N. General Assembly, South Korean Foreign Minister Han Seung-soo, representing the world body.

Annan has given "the U.N. an external prestige and an internal morale" hardly before seen since the world body's founding in 1945, chairman Gunnar Berge said.

A new awareness

Annan said the United Nations' mission for the 21st century "will be defined by a new, more profound, awareness of the sanctity and dignity of every human life."

"We have entered the third millennium through a gate of fire," Annan said. "If today, after the horror of 11 September, we see better, and we see further -- we will realize that humanity is indivisible."

In honor of the 100th anniversary of the first prize, more than 20 peace laureates from previous years, including East Timorese freedom fighter Jose Ramos-Horta and South Africa's Desmond Tutu, participated in the ceremonies at Oslo City Hall, amid tight security.

Meanwhile, 12 scientists, researchers and economists joined author V.S. Naipaul to collect their Nobel Prizes from Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf at the Concert Hall in Stockholm.

Some 160 literature, chemistry, economics, physics and medicine laureates gathered on the stage after a week of centennial celebrations in Stockholm.