Jahn served on the committee from 1942 to 1966, and was head of the Central Bank and a leader of the Norwegian anti-Nazi resistance. His diaries record in detail arguments and rivalries within the secretive five-member Committee which controls the Peace Prize.

In 1947, says Reuters, two of the five members wanted to give Gandhi the prize for his philosophy of passive resistance that was a major weapon in India's fight for independence. Jahn records in his diary that he told the others: ``He [Gandhi] is obviously the greatest personality proposed and there are very, very many good things to say about Gandhi. But we must remember that he is not only an apostle of peace, he is alsoa nationalist.''

Jahn writes he was worried that, after two Committee members came out in favour of Gandhi, a third, former foreign minister Birger Braadland, might also vote for him.

Braadland did not vote for Gandhi. In his diary, Jahn comments on this, saying Braadland had understood international relations.Another Committee member, Martin Tranmael, also opposed Gandhi's nomination. Jahn records Tranmael's objection as being that the strife between India and Pakistan following Partition had to be resolved before a Peace Prize could be awarded. Being a ``nationalist'' or leader of a country where there is no settled peace has not stood in the way of Peace Prize winners, from Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin to Yitzhak Rabin-Yasser Arafat or John Hulme and David Trimble.

Indeed, the Committee's objections in 1947 have clearly not been a precedent for Peace Prizes awarded in the last 50 years, many of which went to leaders of countries still at war with each other.

The 1947 Peace Prize went to the twomain Quaker organisations, Friends Service Council of Britain and the American Friends Service Committee. Historians have argued that Norway's gratitude to Britain after the war and racism may have deprived Gandhi of the award. There are others who have argued the Peace Prize is no measure for a man of Gandhi's stature.

The period after the war was clearly one of contentious wrangling in the Committee. No awards were made between 1939 and 1945. The Committee did not consider Allied wartime leaders like Winston Churchill or US President Harry Truman for the first award after the war -- something that would be routine today.

In 1945, Jahn successfully argued for an award to former US Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who helped set up the United Nations. He, however, bitterly opposed the majority decision to make a retrospective award of the 1944 prize to the Red Cross. He writes: ``I was least happy that the prize went to the International Red Cross.'' He said a leader of the Norwegian Red Cross exploitedthe prize for ``scandalous publicity for the Norwegian Red Cross, which has done nothing in the international arena.''