UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Friday he is delighted that the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize had been awarded to the UN nuclear watchdog and its head Mohamed ElBaradei.

"The secretary-general congratulates him and the entire staff of the agency, past and present, on their contributions to global peace," Annan's spokesman said here in a statement.

Annan is on a working visit to Switzerland.

The spokesman said that the prize was a welcome reminder of the acute need to make progress in nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament at a time when weapons of mass destruction continued to pose a grave danger to the mankind as a whole.

The Nobel committee announced earlier on Friday that the International Atomic Energy Agency and ElBaradei had been awarded the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts against nuclear proliferation.

Source: Xinhua