Carter warns against military 'catastrophe' as stars call for peace

The former US president Jimmy Carter warned against the "catastrophic consequences" of pre-emptive military action when he accepted the Nobel peace prize yesterday.

While he did not mention either Iraq or the United States by name, Mr Carter made clear he was opposed to America acting unilaterally and that the United Nations remained the "best place for nations to resolve the differences that always exist".

At the ceremony in Oslo, he added: "For powerful countries to adopt a principle of preventative war may well set an example that can have catastrophic consequences." Mr Carter, who will give the $1m (£640,000) prize to his Carter Centre, has criticised the Bush administration's stance but yesterday's comments were his most damning. "War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other's children," he added.

The chairman of the Nobel peace prize committee, Gunnar Berge, has saidgranting the award to Mr Carter, President from 1976-80, should be interpreted as a criticism of George Bush's Iraq policy.

Meanwhile more than 100 film and music business celebrities, including Martin Sheen, Kim Basinger, Matt Damon and Susan Sarandon, voiced their opposition to a war against Iraq, saying it would diminish US national security and subvert America's democratic traditions.

"A pre-emptive military invasion of Iraq ... will increase human suffering, arouse animosity toward our country, increase the likelihood of terrorist attacks, damage the economy, and undermine our moral standing in the world," they said in an open letter under the banner Artists United to Win Without War.

"We reject the doctrine ­ a reversal of long-held American tradition ­ that our country, alone, has the right to launch first-strike attacks."

Other signatories included Gillian Anderson, David Duchovny, Mia Farrow, Laurence Fishburne, Elliott Gould, Ethan Hawke, Helen Hunt, Anjelica Houston, Samuel Jackson, Jessica Lange, Tony Shalhoub and Alfre Woodard. Other signatories included a retired rear admiral, Eugene Carroll, and a former US ambassador to Iraq, Edward Peck.