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US president Barack Obama has been awarded the Nobel peace prize for 2009.
The Nobel committee announced that he has been honoured "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples".
In a statement released in Oslo, the committee said it had attached "special importance" to Obama's work to reduce the number of nuclear weapons.
"For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's leading spokesman," it said.
"The committee endorses Obama's appeal that 'now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges'."
He was praised for creating a "new climate" in international politics and returning multilateral diplomacy and the United Nations to the "central position" the institution lacked under former US President George W Bush.
The committee also noted that under the Obama administration, the United States "is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting".
It is unusual for a world leader to be awarded the Nobel peace prize after less than a year in office – Barack Obama became president in January.
The prestigious prize was first awarded in 1901 to Jean Henry Dunant, founder of the international committee of the Red Cross, and Frederic Passy who established the first French peace society.
Other notable American recipients of the prize include Martin Luther King in 1964, Henry Kissinger in 1973 and former US president Jimmy Carter in 2002.
The peace prize is one of five prizes awarded annually by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm for outstanding contributions in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace.
Since 1969, a prize in economic sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel has also been awarded.
Whereas the other prizes are awarded by specialist committees based in Sweden, the Peace Prize is awarded by a committee appointed by the Norwegian parliament.
According to Nobel's will, the peace prize is to go to whoever is judged to have "done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses".
The prize includes a medal, a personal diploma, and 10 million Swedish kronor (£897,000). It is awarded at a ceremony in Oslo on December 10, the date on which Alfred Nobel died.
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