Bangladesh gives Nobel Peace winner hero's welcome

DHAKA, Dec 19 (Reuters) Muhammad Yunus, banker to the poor and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner, returned to a hero's welcome in the Bangladesh capital today after a visit to Norway to pick up the award.

Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded were cited for their work to lift millions out of poverty by giving loans to the desperately poor, especially women in rural Bangladesh.

The award, announced earlier in the year, was welcome news in the impoverished South Asian nation which gets regularly hit by nature's fury -- droughts, cyclones and floods.

Yunus left an airport reception perched on the back of a lorry and waved to the thousands of cheering well-wishers as his large motorcade made its way through the city's streets to the Grameen Bank headquarters, television showed.

Yunus and Grameen Bank representative Mosammat Taslima Begum received gold medals and diplomas from the Nobel Committee at a ceremony in Oslo on December 10.

The prize created by the Swedish philanthropist and inventor of dynamite Alfred Nobel comes with a cheque for 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.47 million), to be shared by the winners.

''We must work hard in all sectors including politics to keep up the image that we have created by achieving the Nobel Peace Prize,'' Yunus told a news conference on Tuesday.

REUTERS PDM HT1627