Obama says Nobel Peace Prize is "call to action"

But Obama is still widely seen around the world as an inspirational figure.

"Very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the Nobel committee said in its citation.

LAST SLAP FOR BUSH?

Some analysts saw it as a final slap in the face for Bush from the European establishment, which had resented what they saw as his arrogant "cowboy diplomacy" in world affairs.

U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters the prize could stimulate diplomacy.

"We think that this gives us a sense of momentum when the United States has accolades tossed its way rather than shoes," he said.

Crowley's remark was an apparent reference to a December 2008 incident in which an Iraqi reporter hurled his shoes at Bush and called him a "dog" at news conference, both grave insults in the Arab World.

While the award won praise from statesmen such as Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev and Jimmy Carter, all Nobel laureates, it was also attacked in some quarters as hasty and undeserved.

Afghanistan's Taliban mocked the award.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, speaking to Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location, said it was absurd to give a peace award to a man who had sent 21,000 extra troops to Afghanistan, and Obama "should have won the 'Nobel Prize for escalating violence and killing civilians.'"

Despite declining U.S. public support for the war, Obama is considering a request for at least 40,000 more troops from his top commander, who says otherwise the mission could fail.

Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland rejected suggestions from journalists that Obama was getting the prize too early. "We hope this can contribute a little bit to enhance what he is trying to do," he told a news conference.

Obama is the fourth U.S. president to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after Carter won in 2002, Woodrow Wilson picked it up in 1919 and Theodore Roosevelt was chosen for the 1906 prize.

TOO HASTY?

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki called the award premature, but at the same time contrasted Obama with the Bush administration.

"The decision in this connection was hasty and the granting of this prize was premature," Mottaki told the semi-official Mehr news agency. "If this prize serves as an element of encouragement for the practical negation of the previous U.S. administration's war-mongering and unilateral policies with an orientation on a just peace we would not oppose it."