Aceh peacemakers among Nobel prize favourites

OSLO, Oct 10 (Reuters) The parties to a year-old peace in Indonesia's Aceh province and Finland's Martti Ahtisaari, who brokered the deal, are among the favourites to win this year's Nobel Peace Prize when it is announced on Friday.

However, past attempts by academics and bookies to guess the winner have often been way off beam since no one outside the secretive Norwegian Nobel Committee knows the list of nominees for the award, set up by Swedish philanthropist Alfred Nobel.

This year's possible laureates include a Muslim woman defender of the rights of China's Uighur minority, a Vietnamese monk under house arrest, and Irish rockers Bob Geldof and Bono as long-shots.

But much speculation has focused on Aceh where peace has been in place since August 2005 after a tsunami at the end of 2004 devastated the province and led Jakarta and Aceh rebels to end a conflict in which more than 15,000 people have died.

To reward and support that process, the prize could be shared between Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the rebel Free Aceh Movement and possibly former Finnish president Ahtisaari who mediated the deal, experts say.

Australian bookmakers Centrebet have tipped Ahtisaari and his Crisis Management Initiative to win the 10 million Swedish crowns 1.36 million dollar prize with 2-1 odds, followed by Yudhoyono at 4-1 and the Free Aceh Movement at 5.5-1.

The Aceh deal signed in Helsinki stands out in a year when peace efforts from the Middle East to Sri Lanka lie in tatters.

''The only really successful peace process in the past year has been the Aceh process,'' said Stein Toennesson, head of the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo.

''So it will be very difficult for the committee to ignore that and give it to someone who wasn't involved,'' said Toennesson who lists Ahtisaari as his top pick followed by Yudhoyono and China's Rebiya Kadeer, a Muslim Uighur activist.

''LOTTERY TICKET'' Centrebet has Kadeer in fourth place on 13-1 and dissident Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Quang Do, a campaigner for democracy and human rights, in fifth at 15-1.

Asked in Helsinki yesterday about his chances, Ahtisaari said he knew he was a nominee this year and added: ''I have a feeling that when it comes to the Nobel Peace Prize at least now I have got a ticket for the lottery.'' Toennesson said the committee could settle on Ahtisaari alone since it may find it hard to choose a suitable representative of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) to share the prize with Yudhoyono.

Acehnese say that Yudhoyono's equal on the GAM side would be its founder Tengku Hasan di Tiro who is ailing in exile. But Toennesseon said he did not find him a likely prize-winner. ''His main role has been to keep up the armed struggle.'' The committee might choose to reward Ahtisaari also for past peace work -- from overseeing Namibia's transition to independence for the United Nations in 1989-1990 to his role as the West's point man in the Kosovo crisis in 1999.

Since November 2005 Ahtisaari has been the special envoy of the UN Secretary-General on the future status of Kosovo.

''It seems that the Finnish gentleman has a lot of qualifications through his public work, and certainly the committee has been thinking about him, said Irwin Abrams, an American expert on the history of the peace prize.

Last year's prize went to the UN's nuclear watchdog and its Egyptian head, Mohamed ElBaradei.

The previous year it went to Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai and the 2003 award to Iranian human rights advocate Shirin Ebadi.

REUTERS LL BD0934