NORWAY: The Norwegian Nobel committee picked the winner of the 2004 Peace Prize from a record field of 194 candidates yesterday with the UN nuclear watchdog and its head, Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, tipped as favourites. However, the winner will not be announced until next month.
Other contenders include former Czech president Mr Vaclav Havel, South African anti-AIDS campaigner Mr Zackie Achmat and his Treatment Action Campaign, the European Union and Pope John Paul, after a year with few big breakthroughs towards peace.
"We had a meeting, we did reach a conclusion and [it\] will be announced on October 8th," said Mr Geir Lundestad, director of the Nobel Institute who attends as secretary at the meetings of the secretive five-member panel in Oslo. His cautious wording does not give away the number of laureates. The 10 million Swedish crowns (€1.1 million) prize, first awarded in 1901, can be split up to three ways.
And it leaves open the possibility that the committee decided not to make any award - something that has not happened since 1976. The panel would usually schedule another meeting before the October 8th announcement date if it was deadlocked.
Several experts said campaigners against the spread of weapons of mass destruction could be honoured in 2004, perhaps the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its Egyptian-born director Dr ElBaradei. "I think the most likely winner is ElBaradei," said Mr Espen Barth Eide, a researcher at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.
A prize to the IAEA and Dr ElBaradei would be topical because of the agency's efforts to get Iran to freeze uranium enrichment activities and its work in North Korea and Iraq, he said.
A drawback for Dr ElBaradei could be that the 2004 prize went to Iranian human rights lawyer Ms Shirin Ebadi. The committee might not want to shine its critical spotlight on Tehran again.
Mr Stein Toennesson, head of the Peace Research Institute, Oslo, agreed that the prize was likely to reward work against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. He said candidates could also include US Republican senator Mr Richard Lugar and former Democratic senator Mr Sam Nunn for their work to fund destruction of former Soviet atomic warheads.
Experts said Mr Hans Blix, ex-chief UN weapons inspector, who worked with Dr ElBaradei in Iraq in a vain search for weapons of mass destruction before the US-led war in 2003, was unlikely to win partly because his work was carried out too long ago.
Furthermore, the committee may want to avoid seeming too anti-Washington. The 2002 prize went to ex-president Mr Jimmy Carter in what the head of the Nobel committee said at the time was a criticism of President George W. Bush's policies in Iraq.
Mr Irwin Abrams, the US author of the main reference work on the prize and professor emeritus at Antioch University, Yellow Springs, Ohio, noted that South African anti-AIDS campaigners were on the list.
However, he said: "Recognition of the nuclear threat is needed most at this time . . . ElBaradei would be a good selection." Favourites, according to an Australian Internet betting group, are the IAEA and Dr ElBaradei at 5-1, Mr Blix at 6-1, while Messrs Haveland Nunn/Lugar share 7-1.
Others include Israeli anti-nuclear whistleblower Mr Mordechai Vanunu at 11-1, Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá at 12-1, Pope John Paul at 15-1 and Russian human rights campaigner Mr Sergei Kovalev at 16-1. - (Reuters)