Oslo, Mar 09: Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie was considered for the Nobel Peace Prize a decade ago for his work in negotiating the now-derailed Oslo peace accords, a former committee member said. Breaking a 50-year rule of silence meant to keep committee deliberations secret, Kaare Kristiansen said that Qurie's inclusion in the controversial 1994 prize would have made it more balanced between Palestinians and Israelis.

Kristiansen resigned when Palestinian President Yasser Arafat was chosen to share the award with late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and former Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres for what was at the time a landmark peace deal. Qurie, also known as Abu Ala, had been one of the main negotiators of the accords in secret talks in Norway in 1993.

''Abu Ala was being discussed as a possible candidate,'' Kristiansen, a strongly pro-Israeli member of Norway's Christian People's Party, said on the eve of a two-day visit by Qurie to Norway.
Kristiansen had regarded Arafat as a source of violence in the West Asia and he opposed awarding him the prize. But his objections were overruled by other members of the five-strong committee. Bureau Report