Oct. 10 (Bloomberg) --Former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, Irish rock star Bob Geldof and the U.K.-based charity Oxfam are among candidates to win this year's Nobel Peace Prize, researchers and bookmakers said.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Chinese dissident Rebiya Kadeer are also contenders for the 10 million- krona ($1.4 million) award, said researchers including Stein Toennesson, director of the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo. The winner will be announced by the Norwegian Nobel Committee on Oct. 13.

``The only really successful peace process in the world today is the Aceh process in Indonesia, which was mediated by Ahtisaari,'' Toennesson said in a Sept. 28 interview. ``It will be difficult for the committee to ignore it.''

Indonesia's government and separatists from the nation's Aceh province last year signed a peace accord ending three decades of conflict and giving more autonomy to the people of Aceh. Ahtisaari, 69, brokered the talks through his Crisis Management Initiative.

Australian bookmaker Centrebet today gave Ahtisaari and his group an even chance of winning the prize. Yudhoyono, 57, had 3-1 odds, while the separatist Free Aceh Movement had a 9-2 chance.

Nominations for the peace prize are kept secret by the Oslo- based Nobel committee, though some candidates are made known by the nominators. Of the 191 nominees for this year's award, 168 were for individuals and the rest for organizations.

Former winners, parliaments and governments, university chancellors and leaders of peace research institutes can propose candidates. Researchers familiar with the nomination process make annual predictions of the nominees and their chances of success.

`No Obvious Winner'

Yudhoyono was nominated for the prize by U.S. Congressman Robert Wexler for promoting peace and democracy in Indonesia.

``There is no obvious winner this year,'' said Ulf Bjereld, a professor of political science at Gothenburg University, in an Oct. 3 interview. ``I think the prize will go to some low-key organization or person.''

Oxfam, SOS Children's Villages, Amnesty International and groups working to help victims of the 2004 tsunami in Asia or fighting the spread of AIDS may be candidates, Bjereld said. Amnesty won the prize in 1977. Past winners can receive the award again.

The Nobel committee has said it may also consider categories of people who have not traditionally won the prize, such as rock singers working to stop poverty and war.

Geldof, Bono

Ex-Boomtown Rats singer Geldof, 55, was nominated by a former member of Norway's Parliament, Jan Simonsen. Geldof set up the 1985 Live Aid and 2005 Live 8 concerts to raise awareness and money in the fight against poverty. He campaigned for developing- world debt relief with Irish rock star, Bono, 46. Centrebet gave each singer the same odds of winning, 33-1.

The award could also go to an institution doing applied research on peace and war, such as the International Crisis Group in Brussels, which works with governments to prevent and resolve armed conflict, said Sverre Lodgaard, director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and a deputy member of the peace prize committee.

``The tendency is for the concept of peace to be expanded,'' Lodgaard told reporters today. ``The prize will almost certainly be given to someone who has made an impact on a political process today.'' As a deputy member of the committee, he isn't privy to its selection process unless called on to replace a member.

The committee may want to draw attention to people struggling for political and human rights in Asia, such as China's Kadeer, who was jailed while defending the rights of the Uighur people, or Vietnamese dissident Thich Quang Do, a Buddhist monk held under house arrest, the researchers said.

Iraq

California mother Cindy Sheehan, 49, whose soldier son was killed in Iraq in 2004, may be a candidate for helping to organize a campaign for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, according to Toennesson. Sheehan has protested outside President George W. Bush's Texas ranch.

Centrebet yesterday gave Sheehan 16-1 odds of winning while offering 1,000-1 odds of a Nobel peace prize for Bush, 60, or two of his supporters on Iraq, U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, 53, and Australian Prime Minister John Howard, 67.

Toennesson had UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, 68, and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, 82, as top contenders when they won the peace prize in 2001 and 2002, respectively.

Last year's prize went to the International Atomic Energy Agency and its Egyptian director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, 64, for their work to stop the military use of nuclear energy.

The prize was established in the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, and first awarded in 1901. Nobel also created awards for medicine, physics, chemistry and literature. An economics prize in his memory was set up in 1969 by Sweden's Central Bank. The awards are formally presented at ceremonies on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896.

The peace prize is awarded by the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo. Nobel didn't explain why he arranged for the prize to be awarded outside Sweden, though the two countries were in a union when his will was written, the Nobel Peace Center said on its Web site. Norway gained its independence in 1905.

To contact the reporter on this story: Bunny Nooryani in Oslo at bnooryani@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 10, 2006 05:23 EDT