Bono, Bob in Nobel running

BOB GELDOF and Bono are among the bookmakers’ tips to win the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, alongside more orthodox candidates like campaigners against nuclear arms or a peace broker for Indonesia.

Experts are divided about whether the secretive five-member committee would dare to broaden the scope of the $1.3 million award in 2005 to honour Geldof or Bono, who have campaigned for years to ease hunger and poverty in Africa.

Last year, the committee won both plaudits and brickbats for awarding the prize for the first time to an environmentalist, Kenya's Wangari Maathai, for leading a campaign to plant millions of trees across Africa.

After that mixed reception, guardians of what many view as the world's highest accolade may be reluctant to be innovative a second time. A total of 199 candidates have been nominated for the 2005 award, which can be split up to three ways.

"If the prize branches out to virtually anything that is trendy, it stands to lose the intent that (Swedish founder) Alfred Nobel had to prevent war," said Janne Haaland Matlary, a professor of political science at Oslo University.

Still, Bono and Geldof have risen from 66-1 to be third joint favourites at 7-1 on an Australian bookmakers' ranking in recent days after Stein Toennesson, a leading Norwegian prize commentator, placed them among his favourites.

"If the committee wants to go further this year in widening its interpretation of peace, the prize could go to Bono or Geldof," said Toennesson, head of the Peace Research Institute, Oslo.

Top of the bookmakers' ranking is former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, at 4-1, for brokering a peace deal between Indonesia and Aceh rebels this year to end a three-decade conflict in which 15,000 have died. Then come US Senator Richard Lugar and former Senator Sam Nunn, on 6.5-1, for their work to dismantle aging nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union. The ranking broadly matches Toennesson's.

Others disagree.

"Since the committee went quite far and were innovative with Maathai they would want to go a little bit back to a core Nobel theme," said Espen Barth Eide, a director at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.

He said that his favourite was the UN nuclear watchdog and its head, Mohamed ElBaradei.