UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and the leaders of France, Britain and Germany greeted the award as an endorsement of the global anti-nuclear arms struggle waged by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency and its director general.

The prize, given 60 years after the first use of an atom bomb, came against as the world struggled with North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions and an Iranian nuclear energy program that the United States and Europe fear may be cover for a weapons program.

"The prize is a welcome reminder of the acute need to make progress on the issue of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament at a time when weapons of mass destruction continue to pose a grave danger to us all," UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said through a spokesman.

But anti-nuclear activists were angry.

George Monbiot, a radical author and commentator with the British daily The Guardian, said the 2005 prize given to the IAEA and its boss "was a reward for failure in an age of rampant proliferation."

A French group, Sortir du Nucleaire (Get Out of Nuclear) said the IAEA should be scrapped because, by "promoting" civilian nuclear power, it had given countries the means to build atomic bombs.

It pointed to the development of nuclear weapons by India, Pakistan and Israel.

"The IAEA is hoodwinking the public by claiming that its inspections are preventing access to nuclear weapons by countries that have signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty," Sortir du Nucleaire said in a press statement.

"Recent developments (Iran, North Korea etc.) have confirmed the IAEA's patent failure," it said.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, however, described the award as "a very intelligent decision."

He singled out the IAEA's "excellent work" to establish whether Iraq harboured nuclear arms in the runup to the US-led Iraq war in 2003 and its efforts to defuse the international standoff over Iran's nuclear program.

Germany, France and Britain have led EU negotiations with Iran to try to persuade the Islamic Republic to curtail its nuclear development program.

Those talks broke down in August when Iran decided to go ahead with uranium enrichment in violation of a deal with the European Union.

The IAEA's board of directors voted last month to start a process to report the country to the UN Security Council which could impose sanctions.

French President Jacques Chirac said: "I'm happy to see the Nobel Peace Prize to go to the IAEA and its director general, Mr ElBaradei, who has for a long time, and through the current difficult period, made a decisive contribution to the search for peace."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, at a joint news conference with Chirac in Paris, said the award was "well-deserved and very important and shows the significance that is attached to the work that agency does."

Even Israel, which neither admits nor denies having nuclear weapons, welcomed the Nobel committee's decision.

Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres, a Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1994, called the award "a warning to Iran because Iran is today the biggest and most dangerous problem," in comments to Israeli public radio.

But another Nobel Peace Prize candidate appeared bitter.

Senji Yamaguchi, an activist whose face was disfigured by the Nagasaki bombing, openly criticized the Nobel judges, accusing them of passing over his group so as not to offend the United States and being biased against grassroots groups.

The 75-year-old, captured in a 1945 photograph showing gruesome radiation burns, has lectured across the world to urge an end to nuclear weapons. He helped found Nihon Hidankyo, the Japanese confederation of nuclear survivors.

"I don't understand why Nihon Hidankyo didn't get the award this year. It makes me wonder if the Nobel Peace Prize committee is paying special consideration to a certain country," Yamaguchi said.

"The United States is responsible for not being able to stop other countries from possessing nuclear weapons," he told reporters at his Nagasaki nursing home where he has spent the past two years.

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