Record number nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

OSLO - A record 199 candidates have been nominated for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize including Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and the ailing Pope.

This tops the previous record of 194 set last year, when the US$1.45 million prize went to Kenyan green activist Wangari Maathai.

"Nominations have come from all around the world and with a broad scope of interest," Geir Lundestad, director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, told Reuters.

Each year the prize is handed out at a ceremony in Oslo on Dec. 10, the date on which Alfred Nobel, who founded the prize, died in 1896.

The awards committee never reveals any of the candidates but names are sometimes leaked by those eligible to make nominations including members of parliament, Nobel laureates and academics.

This year's list includes 36 organizations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency, in the 60th anniversary year of the atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.

Also on this year's list are Indian spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu and Irish rock star Bono.

Lundestad said people in the United States, Germany, Sweden and Norway were the most frequent nominators and the committee members had added a "significant number" to the list this week, at their first meeting of the year.

TSUNAMI PRIZE?

Some Nobel watchers believe the 2005 award will go to someone involved with relief efforts after the Dec. 26 tsunami in the Indian Ocean.

Others speculated there could be another African winner, possibly to spotlight the peace accord between Sudan's government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement in January, ending Africa's longest-running civil war.

"A lasting peace accord in Sudan could have positive effects far beyond Sudan, promoting peaceful ties between Islam and Christianity everywhere," said senior researcher Espen Barth Eide at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.

Pope John Paul, nominated many times, is unlikely to win since the Nobel committee is widely believed to object to his conservative moral teachings, like opposing birth control.

The nomination procedure allows a wide range of people to be put forward for the prize. Previous candidates included Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

- REUTERS