Australian, Finn among tips for Nobel Peace Prize
Source: Reuters
By Alister Doyle OSLO, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Finnish ex-President Martti Ahtisaari, who secured a peace accord in Indonesia's Aceh province, and veteran peace broker Gareth Evans of Australia are among those tipped to win the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. Ethnic Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer, who accuses Beijing of persecuting Uighur people in northwestern Xinjiang, and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono are also among possible winners of what many see as the world's top accolade. Ole Danbolt Mjoes, the head of the secretive Norwegian Nobel Committee, will announce the 2006 laureate in Oslo on Friday at 11 a.m. (0900 GMT) from a secret list of 191 nominees, rounding off this year's Nobel awards from medicine to literature. "This year I find the field to be wide open," said Sverre Lodgaard, head of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, noting that predictions for the 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.36 million) prize were often wrong. Australian online bookmaker Centrebet rates Ahtisaari favourite for brokering a 2005 deal between Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement to end a three-decade conflict in which about 15,000 people died. It places Yudhoyono second, ahead of the Free Aceh Movement. Behind parties to the Aceh deal it places Kadeer, jailed by China for five years and who now campaigns for the rights of the Uighur from exile in the United States. NRK television, which has an uncanny record of including the winner of the prize among its suggestions a day ahead, said former Australian Foreign Minister Evans was also a possible winner. Evans does not even figure on Centrebet's list. CRISIS GROUP Evans heads the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG), a think-tank which conducts research and works to prevent conflicts. He was an architect of a 1991 peace accord for Cambodia, and foreign minister of Australia in 1988-1996. Ahtisaari is also a chairman emeritus of the ICG. The prize, named after Sweden's Alfred Nobel and set up in 1901, can be split up to three ways. Brokers have traditionally fared worse in winning Nobel Peace Prizes than parties to ending conflicts, who often put their lives or political careers on the line. The last mediator to win was former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, in 2002. The 2005 award went to the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its Egyptian head Mohamed ElBaradei in a year marking the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. NRK's expert Geir Helljesen also said that journalists, campaigners against world poverty or Russian human rights activist Sergei Kovalyov might be possible winners. Ahtisaari is currently the U.N. special envoy for the future of Kosovo. As a top U.N. official he oversaw Namibia's transition to independence in 1989-1990. (additional reporting by John Acher and Marianne Fronsdal)
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