Record 194 nominations for Nobel Peace Prize
OSLO, Norway (Reuters) – A record 194 groups and
individuals have been nominated for the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize,
the Nobel Institute said Tuesday, including world leaders, U.N.
officials and an imprisoned Israeli nuclear whistle-blower.
“We just finished our first meeting of the year,” Geir
Lundestad, director of the Norwegian institute, said. “The
final count shows that we have 194 nominations, of which 50 are
organizations.”
The number of candidates beat the previous record of 165
last year when the award went to Iranian lawyer Shirin Ebadi,
the first Muslim woman to win the prize.
The deadline for mailing nominations for the award, named
after Sweden’s Alfred Nobel, was Feb. 1.
The list of names is secret but some people who are
eligible to nominate — ranging from legislators to former
laureates — make their candidates public.
Among the nominees for the 2004 prize are the head of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, imprisoned Israeli atomic whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu, former Czech President Vaclav Havel and former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix.
President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and
French President Jacques Chirac are also among the nominees.
The winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, worth $1.35
million, will be announced in October, followed by an awards
ceremony in Oslo in December.
REUTERS