Obama accepts peace Nobel, defends "just war"

By Ross Colvin and Wojciech Moskwa

OSLO (Reuters) - President Barack Obama defended the right of the United States to wage "just wars" as he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday, acknowledging that as a wartime president he was a controversial choice.

In a speech at the award ceremony in Oslo, preceded by a fanfare of trumpets, Obama declared he would not "stand idle" in the face of threats to the United States.

He raised the specter of a new nuclear arms race, potentially in the Middle East or East Asia, and called for tough sanctions against nations that did not abide by international laws, a warning to Iran and North Korea.

Obama also acknowledged criticism that he does not deserve the prize and has few tangible gains to show from his nearly 11 months in office, saying he was "at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage."

The president's acceptance speech, punctuated with references to past winners of the peace prize, was notable for its dominant theme of war.

He was speaking just nine days after ordering 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan in a major expansion of the eight-year-old war. Obama hopes the additional troops will help to break the momentum of a resurgent Taliban and buy time to train Afghan security forces to take over from the Americans.

In his only reference to the troop build-up, Obama said: "We are at war, and I am responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill. Some will be killed. "