OSLO (REUTERS) — Speculation was rife ahead of the Nobel peace award Friday, with ideas ranging from Afghan president Hamid Karzai to Chinese dissidents, but with no clear front-runner.
Many of the record 156 nominees for the 2002 prize were linked to global efforts to combat terror after the Sept. 11 suicide attacks on the United States last year.
But tips included everything from President Bush to a variety of political, environmental and even rock music groups.
The secretive committee will reveal the award at 5 a.m. EDT at the Nobel Institute in Oslo, following a string of meetings between the five Norwegian members since the February deadline for nominations.
“It is a tough call this year, but I think the committee will make a choice that intervenes directly into an important political process,” Stein Toennesson, head of the Peace Research Institute in Oslo, told Reuters.
Last year’s award, worth $1.08 million, went to the United Nations and Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the 100th anniversary of the first prize. The award was widely predicted in advance.
Possible 2002 winners also include Chinese human rights group Tiananmen Mothers and the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and its prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte.
Other tips for the prize — named after Alfred Nobel, who invented dynamite — include U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, a Republican, and former Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn for efforts to dismantle nuclear and chemical weapons from the former Soviet Union.
“My favorites are Lugar and Nunn, or Karzai. The Tiananmen Mothers come in at a good third, in my view,” Toennesson said, adding that Afghan president Hamid Karzai was a “relatively weak leader” who could use the support from a peace prize.
And the Tiananmen Mothers, of people killed in the Chinese crackdown in June 1989, would be a topical choice just ahead of the Chinese Communist Party congress in November, he said.
Subjects of speculations also include individuals and groups who frequently appear among the nominees, including Pope John Paul, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and the Salvation Army.
Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani — all among nominees — are unlikely to win.
At least one of the committee members has spoken out against the U.S.-led strikes on Afghanistan, and Giuliani’s work in aiding the city is from 2001.
Karzai would be one of very few Muslim winners, and his win could be a way for the committee to show that the U.S.-led war against terrorism is not a fight against Islam.
Nominees also include singer Bono of the Irish rock band U2, Orthodox Christian leader Patriarch Bartholomew, known as the “Green Patriarch” for urging religions to save the planet, and a group which works for bridges between religions.
