WASHINGTON Two Norwegian public-relations executives and one member of the Norwegian Parliament say they were contacted by the White House to help campaign for President Clinton to receive this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for his work in trying to negotiate peace in the Middle East. Norwegian officials confirmed that President Clinton is one of the finalists among the 150 people who were nominated this year. The Nobel Peace Prize winner will be announced Friday morning.

Members of Norwegian Parliament, along with other leaders around the world, can officially nominate candidates, but it is considered highly unethical in Norway to actively campaign for a peace-prize candidate, and especially so to contact the five members of the peace-prize committee, four of whom are former members of the Norwegian Parliament.

One current member of Parliament, who did not want his name disclosed, told Fox News that he was contacted in May of this year by a White House official asking for his help to get President Clinton this year’s prize. The member said he told the White House official he was not able to do that, but he said he is certain another member took on the task.

Executives at two Norwegian public-relations firms, who admitted they have privately assisted peace-prize candidates with research and garnering support in the past, said they were contacted by a member of Parliament at the end of May asking whether their firm was interested in conducting a discreet campaign on President Clinton’s behalf.

One of the executives said he received a second call about two weeks later in which he was told that another firm would be handling the job for a six-figure sum. The other executive would not say whether his company handled the work, but only that he had received the initial call.

Officials in Norway say if it became public that a public-relations executive was actively soliciting for a peace-prize candidate, it would ruin the firm’s reputation and that any extensive involvement by a member of Parliament would cause that official to lose his job.

According to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, nominees for the awards are supposed to be kept secret so that candidates do not know they are in contention. When asked about this information, White House spokesman Jake Siewert said there is no truth to the rumor that the president or anyone else at the White House has contacted any member of the Norwegian Parliament, anyone on the actual peace prize committee or any public-relations firm to campaign for the president for the coveted prize.

Siewert further said that individuals may perhaps be pretending to act on the president’s behalf, but that if so, the White House and the president aren’t involved. Alfred Nobel, a scientist who >died in 1896, held more than 350 patents developed in laboratories he founded in more than 20 countries around the world. He was best known in his lifetime for having invented dynamite, which he considered a tool misused for destruction. Supposedly motivated by guilt over his explosive invention, Nobel stipulated in his will that the Norwegian Parliament appoint a five-person independent committee to award five prizes each year to people who in the preceding year “shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.” The first prizes were awarded in 1901. Nobel deemed one part of the prize money, which originated with his dynamite fortune, be given to the person who “shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” The Nobel committee invites thousands of scientists, academics and university professors in numerous countries to nominate candidates to receive prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace. In 1968, the Bank of Sweden established an additional prize for economics in honor of Nobel and to celebrate its 300th anniversary.

The winners of this year’s six Nobel awards will share $9 million in award money, up from $7.9 million shared by six individuals and one organization last year. Past Nobel peace prize recipients include Mother Teresa, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, Holocaust researcher Elie Wiesel, the Dalai Lama, former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger, South African peace activist the Rev. Desmond Tutu, Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, former U.N. secretary-general Dag Hammarskjold, medical researcher Albert Schweitzer, and U.S. presidents Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt.

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