Name Of This Year’s Nobel Peace Prize Recipient Already Decided: Norwegian Nobel Committee

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that he should be awarded the peace prize, an honour previously bestowed on one of his presidential predecessors, Barack Obama, in 2009. (AFP)

Amid renewed talks on US President Donald Trump wanting Nobel Peace Prize with the signing of Israel-Hamas deal to end Gaza war, the Norwegian Nobel Committee on Thursday said that it had finalised the decision on who would be named 2025 peace prize laureate on Monday, several days before the ceasefire deal was signed.

According to The Guardian, most Nobel experts and Norwegian observers believe it is highly unlikely that Trump will be awarded the prize, leading to fears in the country over how he will react to being overlooked so publicly.

The Guardian quoted Kristian Berg Harpviken, the director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, as saying that decisions were apolitical, although the appointing of committee members by the Norwegian parliament in accordance with the will of Alfred Nobel, who bequeathed the money to fund the prizes that bear his name, may complicate that impression.

“I know first-hand the committee acts completely independently. But Alfred Nobel made it somewhat difficult for us by writing in his will that it must be appointed by the parliament. That, unfortunately, is non-negotiable,” he said.

Kirsti Bergstø, the leader of Norway’s Socialist Left party and its foreign policy spokesperson, said: “Donald Trump is taking the US in an extreme direction, attacking freedom of speech, having masked secret police kidnapping people in broad daylight and cracking down on institutions and the courts. When the president is this volatile and authoritarian, of course we have to be prepared for anything.”

“The Nobel Committee is an independent body and the Norwegian government has no involvement in determining the prizes. But I’m not sure Trump knows that. We have to be prepared for anything from him,” he added.

Trump has repeatedly said that he should be awarded the peace prize, an honour previously bestowed on one of his presidential predecessors, Barack Obama, in 2009 for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people”.

In July, the US President had asked Jens Stoltenberg, Norway’s finance minister and the former Nato secretary general about the Nobel prize.

At the UN meeting last month, He claimed that he had halted seven “unendable wars”, telling world leaders: “Everyone says I should get the Nobel peace prize.”