Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for his worldwide peace and human rights work in an award seen as criticising Washington's drive to oust Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

Carter, Democratic president from 1977 to 1981, has won praise for his tireless work as an ex-president in trying to bring peace to places from Haiti to North Korea.

Announcing the winner on Friday, the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee praised Carter's decades of "untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote...