Obama, Sarkozy Nobel prize nominees

US President Barack Obama and his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy are believed to be among a record 205 nominations for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

The secretive five-member awards committee, which released its final nominations count on Friday, keeps the names of candidates secret for 50 years. But some of the thousands of people with nominating rights do announce their nominees.

"It is very easy to be nominated for the peace prize, but that is in no way an endorsement by the committee," said Geir Lundestad, the Norwegian awards committee's nonvoting secretary.

The committee said 172 individuals and 33 organizations were on the list by this week's final deadline. The previous record was 199, in 2005.

"There was a very good geographical spread," Lundestad said. The nominations include those postmarked by a Feb 1 deadline, and those added by the committee itself at its first meeting of the year, which was Thursday, he said.

This year, the name of the US president has been put forward by unidentified nominators, although he has been in office only a matter of weeks.

Sarkozy was nominated for peace efforts in the Russia-Georgia conflict and the Middle East.

The names of the Obama and Sarkozy nominators were not immediately known.

Last year's prize went to peace mediator Martti Ahtisaari, a former Finnish president. The Nobel Prizes, created by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, are presented on Dec 10.

Agencies

(China Daily 02/28/2009 page11)