U.S. President Barack Obama has accepted the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize with the acknowledgment that he is only at the beginning of his “labors on the world stage.”

In a speech prepared for the awards ceremony Friday in Oslo, Norway, Mr. Obama said his “accomplishments are slight” compared to other Nobel laureates such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela. He said activists who have been “jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice” or serve as humanitarians around the world were far more deserving of the honor.

The first-year U.S. president also acknowledged the irony of his accepting the Nobel Peace Prize as he prepares to send an additional 30,000 American troops to Afghanistan. He told the gathered dignitaries the war against the Taliban and al Qaida terrorist network was a conflict the U.S. did not seek — a reference to the response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City and near Washington, D.C.