Get the nearest node from a coordinate in openstreetmap database

I have for example a coordinate:

41,791063, 12,6923072

and I want to find the nearest node in the OSM DB

in this example the node 906459460

http://www.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/node/90开发者_StackOverflow社区6459460

then I want to konw which ways is part of

in this example

http://www.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/way/78456451

http://www.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/way/76966153

http://www.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/way/76965957

How can I do using the API? thanks

I don't think this is possible using the API directly, though I might be wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nearest_neighbor_search

is a general problem in computer science and I believe there are various ways to tackle it.