ROCK legends Bono and Bob Geldof have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for the second year in a row, it emerged yesterday.
The pair form part of a 191-strong longlist which includes the president of Indonesia, a former US secretary of state and a Finnish peacemaker. It remains to be seen whether they make the shortlist which is currently being whittled down in absolute s
ecrecy.
Geir Lundestad, the secretary of the Norwegian award committee, played down the achievement of two of pop's most vocal campaigners. He said: "It's easy to get nominated, but very hard to win."
The two Irish compatriots will compete in a field of 168 individuals and 23 organisations. The committee itself has a strict policy of secrecy and refuses to name candidates until 50 years after they were nominated. However, they have no control over people who have nomination rights and who decide to announce their choice.
Geldof, former singer with the punk band the Boomtown Rats, was nominated for masterminding last year's Live 8 benefit concerts timed to coincide with the G8 summit held in Edinburgh in July.
After the summit, leaders of the G8 industrial nations agreed to double the aid to poor countries by 2010, amounting to £28.6 billion per year, and cancel the debts of 18 nations.
An estimated three billion people watched the ten concerts staged in America, Japan, South Africa, Italy, France, UK, Canada, Germany and Russia.
Live 8 marked the 20th anniversary of the first Live Aid concert, also organised by Geldof, which first highlighted the plight of the starving in Africa and raised £60 million for famine victims.
He is an outspoken campaigner for the cancellation of world debt but last night Geldof would not comment on his nomination.
A spokeswoman said: "He doesn't normally comment when he gets nominated. It has come up four or five times now after Live Aid and also in the past few years because of Live 8."
Bono, who performed as part of U2 in Live 8, was nominated for the second time for his fight against world poverty. The Grammy award winning singer announced last month that he has set up his own brand called Red which is designed to promote social awareness. It sells clothes by Gap, Converse and Giorgio Armani, the proceeds of which go to treating women and children suffering from AIDS in Africa.
Nobel prize watcher Dan Smith, former head of the Peace Research Institute in Oslo, said the chances of either ageing rockers winning was slim. He said: "They are the typical kind of high-profile, celebrity nomination."
Instead, he surmised that the committee would be more likely to use the prestige associated with the prize to highlight the efforts and achievement of someone not already in the public eye.
This tendency is reflected in last year's winner, Mohamed ElBaradei, and his organisation, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which aims to regulate the spread of atomic weapons. Other nominations for the 2006 prize include Colin Powell, a former US secretary of State, who was put forward for his efforts to end the Sudan war. He is in company with Martti Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president, and the Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, for brokering a peace deal in the Aceh conflict.
They are considered among the favourites of the competition.
Mr Yuhoyono's spokesman, Dino Pati Djalal, said: "The president is very honoured and humbled by this nomination. As a general, politician and president, he has always tried to promote peace, democracy and reform."
This is the second-biggest longlist in the history of the 105-year competition. It was beaten only by last year's list which numbered 199 nominations. The hard-hitting former New York mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, has also been nominated for cutting down on crime in his jurisdiction along with Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear whistle-blower.
Mr Vanunu was released from prison only last year and is still barred from leaving Israel and from speaking to foreign journalists.
Another unconfirmed nominee is the US chat-show host Oprah Winfrey. Supporters on site oprah4peaceprize.org have been campaigning for her to make the list.
The five-member committee met for the first time on 17 February and a winner will be picked after general agreement is reached and announced in mid-October. The award of $1.3 million is presented on 10 December in Oslo on the anniversary of founder Alfred Nobel's death.
The full article contains 780 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
