China won’t be pleased if peace prize goes to dissident: Nobel official

OSLO - The Chinese government has warned that relations with Norway could suffer should a Chinese dissident be awarded the coveted Nobel Peace Prize for 2010.

Deputy Foreign Minister Fu Ying conveyed that message during a visit to Norway earlier this year, Nobel Institute director Geir Lundestad told Norwegian broadcaster NPK late Monday.

The institute assists the five member Nobel Committee in selecting the winner. This year’s prize is to be announced Oct 8.

A handful of Chinese dissidents, including imprisoned Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo, AIDS activist Hu Jia, and human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, are believed to be among the record 237 nominees this year.

Lundestad’s comments came as members of the Norwegian parliament’s foreign affairs and defence committee were visiting China.

Ine Marie Eriksen Soreide, head of the committee, said the issue had not been discussed during their meetings in China, but underlined that Oslo has always stated that the Nobel Committee is independent of both parliament and government.

Lundestad has earlier mentioned similar signals from other Chinese officials, noting however that the Nobel Committee did not shy away from awarding the 1989 peace prize to Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

In June, He Guoqiang, a member of the Chinese Communist Party`s powerful politburo standing committee, also raised the issue of the Nobel Committee and its work during a visit to Norway, Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store was quoted in media reports at the time.

Liu has been endorsed by among others former Czech president Vaclav Havel, former South African Anglican archbishop Desmond Tutu, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, and the Dalai Lama.

Havel, who was part of the Charter 77 movement centred on a petition that urged the then Communist government in Czechoslovakia to respect human rights, noted that Liu had drafted a similar document in China known as Charter 08.

Among the 237 nominees this year were 38 organisations.

In 2009, the Nobel Committee’s surprise choice was US President Barack Obama.

The committee advises those making nominations not to reveal their proposals in advance, but no rules ban that.

Other nominees in 2010 include Russian human rights organization Memorial, Russian human rights defender Svetlana Gannushkina, and the Congolese physician Denis Mukwege.

Parliamentarians, academics, former peace prize laureates as well as current and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee are among those who have the right to nominate candidates for the coveted award.

The Peace Prize is one of several prizes endowed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite Alfred Nobel. The Norwegian Nobel Institute was set up in 1904 to aid the Nobel Committee in evaluating candidates.