OSLO, Oct 4 (AFP) - One week before the winner of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize is announced, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is tipped as favorite with observers citing his consensus building talents and the symbolic value of his nomination on the 100th anniversary of the prize.

As usual, the winner's name will be a tightly-guarded secret until it is announced on October 12. But observers are practically unanimous in their belief that it will go either to Annan, the United Nations, or both.

"My personal feeling is that it will definitely be Kofi Annan," Stein Toennesson, the head of the Oslo Peace Research Institute (PRIO), told AFP.

Toennesson suggested that the Nobel Committee, which announced on September 28 that it had made its choice, had likely chosen a symbolic winner who "pulls together" a century of Nobels.

He said Annan could receive the prize either alone or together with the UN organization, "mostly for his personal qualities but also because of the current international crisis and because the Nobel Prizes are celebrating their centenary this year."

Toennesson described Annan, who hails from Ghana, as "a discreet person with charisma but who is also convincing and who has spent his entire career at the United Nations."

Awarding the prize to him would also be a way of reminding the United States that "all actions against terrorism must be anchored within the UN."

While the members of the Nobel Peace Prize jury rarely speak publicly, when they do their words are chosen with care. A recent comment by Geir Lundestad, the influential secretary of the Nobel Committee and director of the Nobel Institute, may have provided a clue that Annan could be honoured this year.

"He is the only secretary general who can be compared to Dag Hammarskjoeld," Lundestad told the Aftenposten newspaper during a visit by Annan to Norway in August.

Hammarskjoeld, a Swede, is the only UN secretary general to have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, receiving it posthumously in 1961. A number of UN organisations have been honoured over the years, such as UNICEF, UNHCR, and the UN peacekeeping forces, but never the UN as such.

"Annan is also certainly the most effective secretary general the UN has ever had," Lundestad said.

"He has been heavily criticized as being 'the United States' man'. But he is 'the international community's man', in my opinion," he said.

"This was demonstrated by his re-election: Annan received the support of Africa, of course, but also of Asia and all the big powers, even if China dragged its feet," he recalled.

According to Lundestad, Annan can be credited with "saving the world from a new Gulf war" when he travelled to Iraq in 1998 to convince Saddam Hussein at the last minute to allow international inspectors back into the country."

Even his mistakes are not held against him.

"Annan has shown that he has a sense of self-criticism. He proved it, among other things, after the UN failures in Rwanda and Bosnia. That was smart, because he transformed something otherwise negative into something positive," Lundestad said.

In addition to Annan, other favourites for this year's prize are the Red Cross, whose founder Jean Henri Dunant was awarded the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, and the UN war crimes tribunal.

Yet others that have been nominated include former US president Jimmy Carter, Pope John Paul II, the European Court of Human Rights, the sport of football and its international federation (FIFA).

Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi, who recently received the Rafto Prize in Norway, often seen as the antechamber to the Nobel, could also be a serious candidate.

This year's laureate will walk away with a cheque for 10 million Swedish kronor (one million dollars, 1.03 million euros), to be shared if received by more than one winner.

In order to mark the 100th anniversary of the award, this year's formal prize ceremony on December 10 in Oslo is to be attended by most of the previous Peace Prize laureates still alive today.