Nobel Peace winner to be announced
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-10-08 13:52

Among those tipped to win the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize today are the U.N. nuclear watchdog and its leader Mohamed ElBaradei, a Kenyan environmentalist and a Russian anti-nuclear activist.

The leader of the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee, Ole Danbolt Mjoes, will name the winner of the world's top accolade in Oslo at 0900 GMT (10 a.m. British time) from a record field of 194 candidates.

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog IAEA, speaks at United Nations University in Tokyo October 8, 2004. Egyptian-born ElBaradei and the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are among those tipped to win the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for their struggle to keep nuclear weapons away from the terrorists or "rogue states". The Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo will name the winner on Friday at 0900 GMT. [Reuters]

Many tip Egyptian-born ElBaradei and the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency to win the 10 million Swedish crown (760,000 pound) award for their struggle to keep nuclear weapons away from terrorists or rogue states.

"An award to the IAEA and ElBaradei is the closest we can get to candidates who fit today's political climate," said Espen Barth Eide, a researcher at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.

Even so, the IAEA has had an uphill struggle in recent years with crises in North Korea, Iran and Iraq.

Norwegian NRK public television, which has often predicted the winner, said the prize might go to an environmentalist in 2004.

If so, candidates could be Kenyan deputy Environment Minister Wangari Mathai, or Russia's Alexander Nikitin, who leaked details of the nuclear fleet and dumping of radioactive waste from 1965-89, NRK said.

Mathai leads a "Green Belt Movement" that has planted 30 million trees in Africa to help protect the environment. She says decades of excess logging mean just 1.7 percent of Kenya, for instance, is covered by trees.

Treason?

An ex-navy captain, Nikitin was arrested in Russia in 1996 and charged with treason for leaking atomic details to Norwegian environmental group Bellona. He was eventually acquitted.

A prize to Mathai would make her the first African woman to win the peace prize since it was set up in 1901, named after Swedish philanthropist Alfred Nobel. The 2003 prize also went to a woman, Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi.

NRK noted Geir Lundestad, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, said in 2001 that the award might shift in its second century to honour new types of activists such as environmentalists, rock stars, perhaps even journalists.

He also said the prize should speak out "sooner rather than later" about a lack of democracy in China. NRK did not mention a single Chinese candidate for 2004.

Experts have pointed to other contenders including U.S. Senator Richard Lugar and former Senator Sam Nunn for work to dismantle ageing Soviet nuclear warheads and a South African AIDS treatment lobby and its leader, Zackie Achmat.

"I would not bet on (winning) if I were a betting man," Achmat, who is HIV positive, told Reuters in Cape Town. He said a prize would give "enormous recognition" to HIV sufferers.

According to Centrebet, an Internet bookmaker, ElBaradei and the IAEA are favourites at 3.25-1, Nunn-Lugar at 3.5-1, former U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix at 7.5-1, Achmat at 10-1 along with Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu.

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