September 30, 2003	Tuesday	Sha’aban 3, 1424

OSLO: The secretive Nobel panel picked a winner on Monday for the 2003 Peace Prize to be unveiled next week with tips ranging from the Pope to Iranian dissidents but with no clear front-runner.

The winner of the $1.3 million award will remain secret until Friday when the Nobel committee announces its choice among a record 165 nominations.

“The committee reached a decision today. That decision will be announced on October 10,” Director Geir Lundestad of the Norwegian Nobel Institute told Reuters after the last meeting of the five-member committee.

Like every year, Lundestad declined to elaborate on the work of the committee. The prize, which last year went to former US President Jimmy Carter, will be announced in Oslo at 0900 GMT.

Tips for the 2003 prize include Pope John Paul, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its head Mohamed ElBaradei, the European Union, Iranian dissidents and humanitarian groups.

But experts said there was no clear front-runner in a year overshadowed by the war in Iraq and violence in the Middle East.

“The Iraqi war is the big theme, but awarding a prize related to the war could be very difficult. There is no clear favourite this year,” said Espen Barth Eide, senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.

The list of nominees is kept secret but people eligible to nominate, including members of national parliaments and many professors, sometimes publicise their candidates for the prize.

MUSLIM PREFERRED: Stein Toennesson, director of the independent Peace Research Institute, Oslo, said the Pope topped his list of favourites this year followed by Brazil’s Lula — even though he thought the Nobel committee had been seeking a Muslim winner.

“I am sure that the committee would have preferred to award the prize to a Muslim, but there is no Muslim candidate who to the same degree as the Pope has sent a message of peace in connection with the war in Iraq,” Toennesson said.

He also singled out jailed Iranian dissident Hashem Aghajari as a possible winner.

Researcher Kari Vogt at the University of Oslo suggested other Iranian reformists as candidates, including leading dissident cleric Hassan Yousefi-Eshkevari and lawyer Shirin Ebadi for her fight for women’s and children’s rights.

“These would be very worthy winners as they stand for a different interpretation of Islam,” Vogt said.

Other possible candidates include Afghan President Hamid Karzai and frequently speculated winners such as the Salvation Army and the European Union for its planned expansion eastwards.

US President George W. Bush has been nominated for ousting Iraq’s Saddam Hussein but is unlikely to get it since members of the Nobel committee have spoken out against the war in Iraq.

“Theoretically speaking, the United Nations could have won the prize, but it won’t since it recently did. Bush is out of the question,” Barth Eide said.—Reuters