ATLANTA -- For his efforts to bring peace to the world, former President Jimmy Carter has been named the first American recipient of the World Methodist Peace Award.
Carter, according to a joint announcement by World Methodist Council offices in Lake Junaluska, N.C., and Geneva, Switzerland, will receive the award March 13 in Atlanta.
'Mr. Carter's own life shows he is committed to the things that make for peace,' said Joe Hale, general secretary of the council.
'Our feeling was that former President Carter has been a man of peace, not only when he was head of the most powerful nation in the world, but also in his private capacity,' said Hale.
The council cited the establishment of the Carter Center at Emory University and Carter's work on behalf of Habitat for Humanity, a private group that sponsors low-income housing projects.
Hale said the peace award is given periodically, when the 15 officers of the World Methodist Council want to recognize someone. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat received the award in 1978.
While he was president, Carter was instrumental in negotiating the Camp David accords between Sadat and former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
'Looking back on the four years of my presidency, I realize that I spent more of my time working for possible solutions to the riddle of Middle East peace than on any other international problem,' Carter said in a recent interview.
In the past year, the Carter Center has sponsored a consultation among Arab, Israeli and Palestinian leaders, a health forum and a dialogue between industrialists and ecologists.
'There will probably not be another Camp David in my lifetime, but there are things I can do as a private citizen, in an unofficial capacity, that the president of the United States cannot do,' Carter said.
