Peres: Obama has begun turning peace into reality

"Under your leadership you have begun making peace a reality and making it a key issue on the agenda, which must be realized. From Jerusalem I express my confidence that the bells of understanding and dialogue between the nations will start ringing again."

Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, however, said US Obama's win was peculiar. "If the Nobel Prize should have been given according to his achievements as a politician, I would award it to him," said Rivlin.

"I'm afraid the Nobel Peace Prize was given to him so that he will see through steps that are against the interests of the State of Israel" said Rivlin, adding that he is "concerned granting the award to Obama will force Israel to take certain steps."

The announcement on the prize was made while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Jerusalem with Obama's special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell. The details of the discussion were no disclosed.

"We hope that he will be able to achieve peace in the Middle East and achieve Israeli withdrawal to 1967 borders and establish an independent Palestinian state on 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as its capital," he told Reuters.

In Gaza, however, an Islamic Jihad leader, Khaled Al-Batsh, condemned the Nobel committee decision.

"Obama's winning the peace prize shows these prizes are political, not governed by the principles of credibility, values and morals," he said.

"Why should Obama be given a peace prize while his country owns the largest nuclear arsenal on Earth and his soldiers continue to shed innocent blood in Iraq and Afghanistan?"

The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip and opposes a peace treaty with Israel, said the award was premature at best.

"Obama has a long way to go still and lots of work to do before he can deserve a reward," said Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri. "Obama only made promises and did not contribute any substance to world peace. And he has not done anything to ensure justice for the sake of Arab and Muslim causes."

'Embarrassing joke'

Issam al-Khazraji, a day laborer in Baghdad, said, "He doesn't deserve this prize. All these problems - Iraq, Afghanistan - have not been solved...The man of 'change' hasn't changed anything yet."

Liaqat Baluch, a senior leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a conservative religious party in Pakistan, called the award an embarrassing "joke."

An aide to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told AFP on Friday that the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Obama should prompt the US president to start working towards ending injustice in the world.

"We hope that this gives him the incentive to walk in the path of bringing justice to the world order," said Ali Akbar Javanfekr, Ahmadinejad's media aide.

"We are not upset and we hope that by receiving this prize he will start taking practical steps to remove injustice in the world."

In particular, Javanfekr outlined two areas where he said Obama must act to prove he is worthy of the prize.

"If he removes the veto from the United Nations Security Council, then it shows the prize was given correctly to him," Javanfekr said.

Since first taking office in 2005, Ahmadinejad has called for an end to the veto power that the United States and the four other permanent members of the security council have over that body's decisions.

Javanfekr also said Obama "has to say what he has done to narrow the gap between the haves and have nots in the United States and in the nations under US influence.

He must also show "that the United States has decided not to throw away its wheat surpluses but give them to African nations."

Taliban suggest 'Nobel violence prize'

Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai said Friday that Obama was the "appropriate" person to win the Nobel Peace Prize. "We congratulate Obama for winning the Nobel," said Siamak Hirai, a spokesman for Karzai.

"His hard work and his new vision on global relations, his will and efforts for creating friendly and good relations at global level and global peace make him the appropriate recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize," he told AFP.

But Afghanistan's Taliban mocked the award, saying the US president should get a Nobel prize for violence instead.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said it was absurd to give a peace award to a man who had sent 21,000 extra troops to Afghanistan to escalate a war.

"The Nobel prize for peace? Obama should have won the 'Nobel Prize for escalating violence and killing civilians'," he told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.

"When Obama replaced President Bush, the Afghan people thought that he would not follow in Bush's footsteps. Unfortunately, Obama actually even went one step further."

Obama ordered 21,000 extra troops to Afghanistan this year, continuing a strategy of dramatically ramping up forces that began in the final months of the presidency of his predecessor George W. Bush.

Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland rejected suggestions from journalists that Obama was getting the prize too early, saying it recognized what he had already done over the past year.

"We hope this can contribute a little bit to enhance what he is trying to do," he told a news conference.

The committee said it attached "special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons," saying he had "created a new climate in international politics."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama embodies the "return of America into the hearts of the people of the world."

In a message to the US president, Sarkozy expresses his "very great joy" for Obama and says the honor should strengthen the US leader's determination to work toward peace, justice and "maintaining our planet's great balances."

"So soon? Too early. He has no contribution so far. He is still at an early stage. He is only beginning to act," said former Polish President Lech Walesa, a 1983 Nobel Peace laureate.

"This is probably an encouragement for him to act. Let's see if he perseveres. Let's give him time to act," Walesa said.

The Nelson Mandela Foundation welcomed the award on behalf of its founder Nelson Mandela, who shared the 1993 Peace Prize with then-South African President F.W. DeKlerk for their efforts at ending years of apartheid and laying the groundwork for a democratic country.

"We trust that this award will strengthen his commitment, as the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, to continue promoting peace and the eradication of poverty," the foundation said.

Reuters, the Associated Press and AFP contributed to this report