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World class party for Nobel Prize centennial |
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December 20, 2000
OSLO--(AP) - Nobel peace laureates are being asked to return to Oslo next year to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the world's most coveted prize. The guest list could include Nelson Mandela, F.W. de Klerk Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Mikhail Gorbachev, the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Lech Walesa, Henry Kissinger and many other famous names. "It will have to be the biggest assembly of Nobel peace laureates ever," Olav Njoelstad, of the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo, said on Tuesday. The Nobel prizes were first awarded in 1901. The awards committee is planning celebrations leading up to the 2001 prize on Dec. 10, the date the prize's creator, Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, died in 1896. Invitations have been sent to past laureates, but Njoelstad could not say how many might attend. He expects to have more details in February. Like Tutu in 1984, Mandela and de Klerk won the 1993 prize for their efforts to end apartheid in South Africa. Palestinian leader Arafat shared the 1994 prize with Israeli leaders Peres and the late Yitzhak Rabin for their Middle East peace efforts. Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, won in 1990 for helping to end the Cold War, while Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, won the award in 1989 for his struggle on behalf of his people. Former U.S. Secretary of State Kissinger shared the 1973 peace prize with North Vietnam's President Le Duc Tho, who made Nobel history as the only laureate to decline the honor. They won for seeking an end to the Vietnam War. Other laureates invited include David Trimble and John Hume of Northern Ireland who won the peace prize in 1998; land mine campaigner Jody Williams, 1997; Filipe Ximenes Belo and Jose Ramos-Horta of East Timor, 1996; Rigoberta Menchu of Guatemala, 1992; Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma - now known as Myanmar - in 1991; and Lech Walesa of Poland, 1983. The first peace prize went to Red Cross founder Jean Henri Dunant of Switzerland and French peace activist Frederic Passy. This year's prize was awarded to South Korean President Kim Dae-jung. The peace prize is presented in Oslo, while the other Nobel prizes are awarded in the Swedish capital of Stockholm.
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