NEW YORK: UN leader Ban Ki-moon said Friday that the Nobel Peace Prize award to the global chemical weapons watchdog was proof of the threat from the banned arms.

“This recognition occurs nearly 100 years after the first chemical attack — and 50 days after the appalling use of chemical weapons in Syria. Far from being a relic of the past, chemical weapons remain a clear and present danger,” Ban said, in a statement hailing the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

The watchdog said that it hoped its Nobel win would convince countries to ban chemical weapons.

“I know that the Nobel Peace Prize will help us in fact to promote the universality of the (Chemical Weapons) Convention in the next months. Hopefully we will be able to achieve it soon,” OPCW head Ahmet Uzumcu told Norwegian public broadcaster NRK, in the organization’s first reaction to the surprise announcement that it had won the prestigious award.

French President Francois Hollande said Friday that the OPCW’s winning was a “vindication” of international efforts to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal.

“The Nobel prize is a vindication of all that France, and not just France, committed in the last few weeks to denouncing the use of chemical weapons and to eliminating them in the near future.”

“These weapons of terror were used once again on Aug. 21, 2013 by the Syrian regime against civilians: such acts of barbarism must never be able to be repeated,” he said.