A total of 231 nominations have been made for the
2012 Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said Monday.
"It is not the highest number we have had," Geir Lundestad,
director of the Nobel Institute told dpa. "The highest number was
last year with 241 nominations."
Nominees include jailed Ukrainian former prime minister Yulia
Tymoshenko, and Maggie Gobran of Egypt, a Coptic Christian who heads
the aid agency Stephen's Children, as well as former US president
Bill Clinton and former German chancellor Helmut Kohl, Norwegian
public broadcaster NRK said.
The five-member committee advises those making nominations not to
reveal their proposals in advance. However, there are no formal rules
against doing so, allowing some names to become public knowledge.
Bradley Manning, the US soldier who faces court martial over
allegedly leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to
the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, was nominated by three Icelandic
members of parliament, NRK said.
The 2011 winners were Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf who
shared the prize with her compatriot Leymah Gbowee and pro-democracy
activist Tawakkul Karman of Yemen.
The winner is usually announced in early October. The Peace Prize
is one of several prizes endowed by Swedish industrialist and
dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel.
