Carter, Jimmy

39th president of the USA 1977–81, a Democrat. Features of his presidency were the return of the Panama Canal Zone to Panama, the introduction of an amnesty programme for deserters and draft dodgers of the Vietnam War, and the Camp David Agreements for peace in the Middle East. During the 1990s he emerged as a mediator and peace negotiator, securing President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's safe return to Haiti in October 1994. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1999 and the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2002.

Carter was born in Plains, Georgia, and served in the navy as a physicist until 1953, when he took over the family peanut business. He entered politics in 1962 as a Georgia state senator, and in 1970 was elected governor. In 1976 he won the Democratic presidential nomination and went on to a narrow victory over Gerald Ford. His failure to be re-elected owed much to the seizure of US embassy staff in Tehran, Iran, as hostages by a Shiite Muslim group, as well as to an economic downturn.