Anti-nuclear campaigners, rock singer Bono favourites for Nobel
Prize
OSLO, Thursday (AFP) Anti-nuclear campaigners, Irish rock singer
Bono, and Finnish peace mediator Martti Ahtisaari are among the
favourites to win the Nobel Peace prize, which will be awarded on Friday
in Oslo.
The list of candidates, carrying a record 199 names this year, is an
extremely well-kept secret, reducing Nobel-watching in the Norwegian
capital to mere guesswork ahead of the announcement.
"I would lean slightly towards a prize which goes to efforts against
nuclear weapons," Stein Toennesson, director of the Peace Research
Institute in Oslo told AFP.
Sixty years after the US airforce dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in Japan, the Nobel committee could well honour the Japan
Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organization, Nihon Hidankyo,
formed in 1956 by Senji Yamaguchi and other survivors of the attacks.
The group's members travel the world to lobby against nuclear weapons
and share atomic-bomb experiences and has demanded that the Japanese
government provide compensation for nuclear bomb victims.
Other potential laureates within the anti-nuclear proliferation field
are US Senator Richard Lugar and former Senator Sam Nunn, whose
Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program works to dismantle nuclear
missiles and submarines to secure fissile materials in the former Soviet
Union.
"The most interesting choice would be the Nunn-Lugar programme
because it focuses on dismantling, which is an aspect often neglected in
anti-nuclear campaigns, but the most likely choice is Nihon Hidankyo
because more people can agree on it," said Toennesson.
The International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA and its chief Mohamed
ElBaradei who play a key role in ensuring that nuclear reactors are not
used for making weapons of mass destruction, are also seen as worthy
laureates.
After last year honouring Wangari Maathai, the first African woman
and first environmentalist to win the prize, the Norwegian committee
could also choose to broaden the field even more by giving the award to
Irish rock stars Bono or Bob Geldof for their "Make Poverty History"
campaign.
The singers were behind Live 8, a series of worldwide concerts held
ahead of this summer's G7 summit to pressurize rich countries to cancel
the debt of the poorest nations. |