OSLO, Oct 11: The watchdog now overseeing the destruction of Syria`s chemical arsenal won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for its efforts to rid the world of the devastating weapons.

In a surprise choice, the Nobel committee honoured the UN-backed Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) for `its extensive efforts` in banishing the scourge of chemical arms.

`Recent events in Syria, where chemical weapons have again been put to use, have underlined the need to enhance the efforts to do away with such weapons,` the Norwegian jury said in its statement.

Around 30 OPCW arms experts and UN logistics and security personnel are on the ground in Syria and have started to destroy weapons production facilities.

The jury criticised theUnited States and Russia for failing to destroy their chemical weapons by April 2012, as required by the Chemical Weapons Convention.

`Certain states have not observed the deadline,` the jury said. `This applies espe-cially to the USA and Russia.

OPCW chief Ahmet Uzumcu told Norwegian public broadcaster NRK the prize would be a major boost for his group`s efforts.

`I know that the Nobel Peace Prize will help us...promote the universality of the Convention` in the coming months, he said.

The OPCW was not consid-ered among the front-runners for the $1.2 million prize until the eve of the announcement.

Malala Yousufzai and Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege had been among the favourites.

`She is an outstanding woman and I think she has a bright future and she will probably be a nominee next year or the year after that, Thorbjoern Jagland, the committee chairman, told The Associated Press.Yemeni journalist and activist Tawakkol Karman, a 2011 Nobel Peace laureate, was among many who had been rooting for Malala to take the prize.

But Karman congratulated the OPCW and said she expected Malala to some day win the award.

`I was hoping that Malala Yousufzai would win it. But I expect that she will win this important prize in the coming years,` Karman told AFP in Paris.

This marks the second consecutive year an organisation has won the prestigious award.

Last year`s award went to the European Union.

The Hague-based OPCW was founded in 1997 to implement the Chemical Weapons Convention signed on Jan 13, 1993.

Until recently operating in relative obscurity, the OPCW has suddenly been catapulted into the global spotlight because of its role in supervising the dismantling of Syria`s chemical arsenal and facilities.

`Fm proud of him and the organisation,` said the wife of one of the OPCW inspectors currently in Damascus.

`I guess it`s a time for celebration but he`s in Damascus so it`s not easy to celebrate, she told AFP in The Hague, asking not to be named.

The OPCW said on Tuesdayit was sending a second group of inspectors to bolster the disarmament mission in the war-ravaged nation.

Since the OPCW came into existence 16 years ago, it has destroyed 57,000 tons of chemical weapons, the majority of them leftovers from the Cold War between the United States and Russia.

`It`s the slow steady laying down of bricks over the weeks, months and years, people sitting in control rooms watching this stuff going into the chutes,` OPCW spokesman Michael Luhan said recently.

The OPCW`s work was the `subject of years and years of patient diplomacy in which we`ve demonstrated that we do diplomacy very, very well.

We`ve kept everybody aboard, we keep adding states.

To date, the OPCW has 189 members representing more than 98 per cent of the world population, with Syria due to become a full-fledged member of the conventionon Monday.

Israel and Myanmar signed in 1993 but have not yet ratifled, according to the OPCW website. Four states North Korea, Angola, Egypt and South Sudan have neither signed nor ratified the Convention.

The OPCW spokesman said the prize would not distract the organisation from its work.

`We`re in the process of trying to achieve something in Syria,` he said. `If we achieve the objectives of this mission, then there`ll be something to celebrate.

By giving the peace award to an international organisation, the Nobel committee found a way to highlight the Syrian civil war, now in its third year, without siding with any group involved.

The fighting has killed an estimated 100,000 people and forced millions of Syrians to flee their homes and country, according to the UN.

-Agencies