Bush, Blair and Pope Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Pope John Paul II are among the 144 individuals and 50 organizations nominated for the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.

Today was the deadline for nominations. The winner of the $1.3 million award will be announced in mid-October.

The prize has lost some of its luster since disastrous ex-president Jimmy Carter was handed it, and some of this year's nominees have a Carteresque flair: French President Jacques Chirac, the European Union and, reportedly, International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian activist group.

Others include: Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya, former Czech President Vaclav Havel, former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, and Israeli technician Mordechai Vanunu, jailed for exposing his country's nuclear weapons program.

Sen. Richard Lugar and former Sen. Sam Nunn were nominated for their program to dismantle nuclear weapons in Russia.

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