[A-List] Norway: midwinter humour

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Bush and Blair nominated for Nobel peace prize
DOUG MELLGREN, Oslo
The Herald, February 02 2004

George W Bush, Tony Blair and the European Union were among known nominees
for the 2004 Nobel peace prize as the nomination deadline ran out yesterday.

The five-member Norwegian awards committee, which keeps the names of
candidates secret, accepts nominations postmarked by February 1.

It expects to have a rough count of the number of nominations by February
13, and a final one after the committee's first meeting of the year on March
2, when members can forward their own candidates.

Last year, there were a record 165 nominations for the prize, which went to
Shirin Ebadi, a Iranian lawyer and human rights activist.

Even though the committee keeps the nomination list secret for 50 years,
those making the nominations often announce their candidate.

Bush and Blair have been nominated several years in a row, including this
year by Jan Simonsen, a Norwegian MP in the right-wing Party of Progress.

In his nomination, Simonsen wrote that by removing Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi
dictator, the leaders had lessened the chance of a war using weapons of mass
destruction in the Middle East and had laid the foundation for the
development of democracy.

Norwegian experts, including Stein Toennesson, director of the Peace
Research Institute-Oslo, last year gave Bush and Blair no chance of winning,
mainly because a vast majority of Norwegians, including members of the
awards committee, deeply opposed the war in Iraq.

Others believed to be nominated include the Pope, the Salvation Army and
Vaclav Havel, the former president of the Czech Republic.

The committee announces its decision in mid-October.