Oslo- Norwegian Parliament Speaker Thorbjorn Jagland was Thursday elected new chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee that selects the Nobel Peace Prize winner.

The veteran Social Democrat has also held the posts of prime minister and foreign minister but last year said he was leaving Norwegian politics.

Jagland, 58, succeeded Ole Danbolt Mjos who left the Nobel Committee. The committee is elected by parliament, and each member sits for six years.

Jagland is the only male member on the current committee. Another new elect was Agot Valle, member of parliament and spokeswoman on international affairs for the Socialist Left Party.

Kaci Kullmann Five, a member of parliament for the Conservative Party 1981-97 and who was trade, shipping and European Affairs minister 1989-90, was elected as deputy leader of the Nobel Committee. She has been a member of the committee since 2003.

Sissel Marie Ronbeck, a former member of parliament and former Social Democratic minister, has been on the committee since 1994 while Inger-Marie Ytterhorn of the Progress Party has served on it since 2000.

The Peace Prize is one of the prizes endowed by Swedish industrialist and dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel.

The coveted award is presented in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's 1896 death while awards for medicine, physics, chemistry literature and economics are presented in Stockholm - also on December 10. (dpa)