Second highest number of nominations for 2006 Nobel Peace Prize

Feb 24, 2006, 16:34 GMT

Oslo - The number of individuals and groups nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize was 191, the second highest in the prestigious award's history, Nobel Committee secretary Geir Lundestad said Friday.

'Of the 191 candidates, 23 are organizations,' Lundestad told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

A record 199 nominations were registered in 2005, and Lundestad said the trend since he joined the committee in 1990 was that the number was on the rise.

'Nominations come from more and more countries,' Lundestad said, but in accordance with the committee's rules declined to name any.

Former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari who helped broker a peace deal in the war-torn Indonesian province of Aceh, as well as Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono were among the top picks in early speculation.

Bono of the Irish rock group U2 who has pushed for debt relief and his Irish compatriot Bob Geldof, who helped organized the Live 8 rock concerts in 2005 in aid of the world's poor were also tipped.

Former Czech president Vaclav Havel and Israeli nuclear whistle- blower are often mentioned as are the Austrian-based relief organization SOS Children's Villages and the Salvation Army.

The 2005 prize was shared by the UN nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency and its head, Mohamed ElBaradei, for efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes.

The committee that selects the final winner advises nominators not to announce their proposals. However, there are no rules against the procedure allowing plenty of speculation before the announcement, normally in mid-October.

Lundestad said the committee would spend the next months cutting the list of nominations to some 20-30 names, which will be further trimmed to a shortlist of a handful of names to be considered.

Parliamentarians, academics, former peace prize laureates as well current and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee have the right to nominate candidates.