From CNN:
Former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari is favorite to win the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize but the odds are against U.S. President George W. Bush, the first bookmaker to take bets on the award said on Friday.
Australia-based Centrebet placed U.S. Senator Richard Lugar and former senator Sam Nunn as joint second favourites for the award on 7-1 for their work on dismantling former Soviet nuclear weapons. The 2005 winner will be announced on October 7.
“Ahtisaari ticks two of this year’s most obvious boxes,” Centrebet’s betting manager Gerard Daffy said.
“He has great peacemaking credentials and brokered a deal between two warring parties from a tsunami-ravished area just a few months ago,” he said. Ahtisaari was rated at 6-1.
More here. Wikipedia entry on Ahtisaari here. More biographical info here.
Martti Ahtisaari was awarded the distinguished J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding in 2000. Other winners of this prize have included Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, Vaclav Havel, Kofi Annan, and Colin Powell. You may read Martti Ahtisaari’s Fulbright Prize speech here.