STOCKHOLM, Sweden – A Finn who helped mediate peace in Indonesia is tipped to win this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, while bookmakers favor a Turkish novelist for the literature award.
But in the hyper-secretive world of the panels that have spent much of the year sifting through hundreds of nominations, it’s a guessing game until the announcements start tumbling out today with the announcement of the medicine prize.
Nobel-watchers rely on complex mathematical formulas, statistical calculations and pure instinct to make their predictions, but they don’t get any hints from the awarding institutions in Stockholm and Oslo, Norway.
The prizes established 111 years ago by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, are in the categories of literature, peace, medicine, physics, chemistry and economics. The latter, many of whose past winners are Americans, is technically not a Nobel but a 1968 creation of Sweden’s central bank.
Winners get a check of 10 million kronor ($1.37 million) and a banquet on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896.
This year, speculation is focused on the Aug. 15, 2005, peace agreement that ended 29 years of fighting between Indonesia’s government and separatist rebels in Aceh province, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
Betting agency Centrebet of Australia has former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, the mediator of that accord, as the favorite, followed by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and the rebels’ Free Aceh Movement.
A tradition of honoring both sides seeking peace means an Aceh prize would likely be shared.
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