War...at the Nobel Peace Prize: Committee chairman is demoted for first time in organisation's 114-year history amid battle with right-wingers
- Labour Party's Thorbjoern Jagland ousted as chairman of the committee
- Set to be replaced by Conservative rival Kaci Kullmann Five
- No serving chair has ever been removed since awards first made in 1901
Ousted: Thorbjoern Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minister of the Labour Party, has been demoted as chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize committee
The committee that awards the Nobel Peace Prize has controversially demoted its chairman for the first time in the 114-year history of the award.
Thorbjoern Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minister of the Labour Party, has chaired the five-member panel since 2009 but was ousted after his right-wing opponents won a majority on the prestigious panel.
He will now revert to being a member of the committee that has received a near-record 276 nominees for the 2015 prize.
Kaci Kullmann Five, a former leader of Norway's ruling Conservative Party, will now take over.
The country's right-wing parties gained a new representative recently, giving them a 3-2 majority and allowing them to make the unprecedented demotion at the first meeting of 2015.
Declining to explain the decision, Ms Five said: 'The committee chooses a leader every year.
'This year is a new committee. Jagland has been a good leader for six years.'
Right-wing parties in the country, who won a parliamentary election in 2013 to oust a Labour-led government, have long disliked Jagland, who was prime minister from 1996.
Mr Jagland had attracted criticism after overseeing a number of controversial of awards, including ones made to Barack Obama in 2009 - less than a year after the U.S. president took office - to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo in 2010 and to the European Union in 2012.
No serving chair has ever been ousted since the awards were first made in 1901, even with shifting political majorities.
Newly appointed chair of The Norwegian Nobel Committee, Kaci Kullmann Five (pictured left) and secretary of the committee Olav Njolstad (right) arrive for a press briefing at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo
The committee is appointed in line with the strength of the parties in Norway's parliament.
Asle Sveen, a historian and Nobel expert, said of Mr Jagland's demotion: 'I don't like it.'
Mr Jagland is also head of the 47-nation Council of Europe, which promotes democracy in Europe, and some right-wing parliamentarians say that amounts to a conflict of interest in deciding who receives the $1 million Nobel prize.
Controversy: Mr Jagland had attracted criticism after Barack Obama triumphed in 2009, less than a year after the U.S. president took office
Most watched News videos
- Pro-Palestine flags at University of Michigan graduation ceremony
- Suella: Plan's not working and local election results are terrible
- Poet Laureate Simon Armitage's Coronation poem 'An Unexpected Guest'
- Police arrest man in Preston on suspicion of aiding boat crossings
- Benjamin Netanyahu rejects ceasefire that would 'leave Hamas in power'
- Rescue team smash through roof to save baby in flooded Brazil
- Moment pro-Palestine activists stage Gaza protest outside Auschwitz
- Zelensky calls on Ukrainians on Orthodox Easter to unite in prayer
- Man spits towards pro-Israel counter-protesters in front of police
- Moment buffalo is encircled by pride of lions and mauled to death
- CCTV of 'radicalised' teen lunging at cops before he was shot dead
- Deliveroo customer calls for jail after rider bit off his thumb
